Snapshots of Forever
by MusicWritesMyLife
Summary: Meredith takes a trip down memory lane, reliving each of the moments behind the scans in Derek's elevator proposal. Spans S1-5. Lots of flirtiness and classic MerDer. Read and reiview! :
1. Into the Fire

__**So some people might think I'm crazy to be starting another story with two on the go, but I actually started this one a long time ago, and, contrary to my other stories, I've got several chapters blocked, so my updates will actually be on time! **

**As you can tell from the summary, this story looks at all the moments that Derek mentions in his proposal. All are told from Meredith's perspective, and, while we saw some of them on the show, some of them are new. And the old ones have a different perspective with some extra stuff added in, I promise. **

**Please let me know what you think!**

* * *

_Come on_

_Come on_

_Put your hands into the fire_

Into the Fire – Thirteen Senses

* * *

_I don't understand why the Chief is blocking my way. It's so immature. I just want to go home. I don't want to wait for another elevator when there is a perfectly good one here. It's a free country; I should be able to take whichever elevator I want._

_ The other one finally arrives. I glare at the Chief suspiciously, wondering if I'm allowed to take it, or if he's just going to jump up and block me again. "Well go on," he says, gesturing to the empty elevator, as if he can't understand why I'm not taking it. I move towards the elevator slowly, unable to fight off the wariness. What was wrong with the other elevator?_

_ The doors open, revealing Derek, adjusting his cuffs. He looks so different from earlier that I can almost forget that the last week even happened. Gone are the beard and the bloodshot eyes, without which the troubled look seems to disappear. He's transformed back into his confident, easy-going self. _

_He smiles at me, that charming McDreamy smile that makes every woman's heart melt. I've forgotten how much I miss it until I see it again: the sight of it makes me want to throw my arms around him and kiss him. "Hey. Come on in," he says._

_ The elevator is full of scans: CT scans, MRIs; they've all been plastered all over the walls. Derek smiles, so proud of his handiwork, and I have to admit, it is stunning. Now I can see why Richard was so adamant that I take the other elevator. _

_ I know what this is. I know what he's doing here. I can hear my own words echoing in my head, words that I said to him only this morning: _No Derek. Not like this.

_He's going to propose. He's going to do it right this time._

_ The CTs are a nice touch; after all, had we not been working at the same hospital that fateful one-night stand would have remained exactly what it was, but I don't really understand why he would put up so many. As I take a closer look, however, I notice that they aren't just any old CT scans. They're all memorable ones; patients that Derek and I both worked on together, often under interesting circumstances. Realizing this makes everything mean so much more. Derek has really gone all out here; this is going to be the proposal of a lifetime. _

_ He guides me over to the first scan. "This is a CT of Katie Bryce. Sixteen year-old female, subarachnoid aneurysm—"_

_ "From a fall during rhythmic gymnastics. I remember." I can't help the smile on my face, remembering my very first case as an intern. _

_ "Right. It was the first surgery we ever scrubbed in together on." Derek's expression is serious now. "Our first save."_

_ I can't help it, I'm grinning like an idiot now. What a day that was. What a case. What a surgery. But as exciting as it all was, I can't help remembering how terrifying it was at first, when it seemed like everything was going wrong…_

* * *

**Sometime during S1 E1 – A Hard Day's Night**

I couldn't believe it. My first day as an intern, my first shift on the job, and my patient had already coded, all because I had been too lazy to answer my pager quickly. Katie had almost died, Dr Shepherd refused to speak to me because he thought I was incompetent, Dr Bailey was pissed because she hadn't been paged right away, and, to top it all off, I had puked in the bushes in front of Cristina Yang, the most hard-core intern of the bunch. It was not shaping up to be a good first shift.

Given what had happened over the last couple of hours, I had decided that I would probably be best off trying to get some sleep. I resisted the urge to go down to the tunnels; all the others would be there, and they'd all be chatting about something or another. So I retreated instead to one of the empty gurneys outside Katie's room. I didn't dare wait in there for fear that Dr Shepherd would kick me off the case.

I'd been sitting there for the better part of twenty minutes, without any hope of getting to sleep. All I could think about was Katie and what could possibly be wrong with her. It wasn't epilepsy, and I was sure as hell it wasn't a brain tumour either, not when all her scans had been clean. Annoying as she was, she had almost died tonight because no one could figure out what was wrong with her, and because I had assumed that the 911 was just her being bored again.

The sound of Katie's door closing jerked me out of my thoughts. Dr Shepherd strode down the hall, his face tense but his expression unreadable. Hastily, I jumped off the gurney, hoping to redeem myself.

"Dr Shepherd, I know you're very busy, and I'm probably the last person you want to talk to," I began, jogging after him, refusing to believe that I actually doing this, that I was actually chasing Derek Shepherd, "but I wanted to apologize."

At this, Shepherd turned, looking somewhat distracted, but at least no longer ignoring me. As soon as he saw me however, his tense expression morphed into one of surprise. I was obviously not who he had been expecting to see. "Apologize?" he repeated, obviously confused.

Courage bolstered, I nodded. "I should have been paying better attention to Katie. I should have taken her condition more seriously, and not brushed her off as some pain-in-the-ass teenager."

I could have sworn a hint of a smile crossed his face—Katie's pain-in-the-ass behaviour obviously hadn't gone unnoticed—but it was replaced so quickly with a sigh, and a running of his hand through his hair that I couldn't be sure. "Just be faster next time, Dr Grey. I know Katie paged you 911 before just when she was bored; the nurse told me—and she shouldn't have paged you for something like that in the first place—but that doesn't mean that you can just disregard the next 911." Derek was obviously worn out by this whole Katie business; there was hardly any severity in his tone, instead, there was weariness, as if he were doing a perfunctory chore that he really hated.

I nodded, the shame threatening to drown me. I'd wanted to make such a good impression on my first day, and so far all I'd managed to do was almost kill my patient, and all because my boss was Derek Shepherd. Okay, maybe that was a little harsh—I probably would have been slow responding to Katie's page, and I might have frozen up a little bit at first when I saw Katie coding—but everything would have been infinitely easier had Derek Shepherd not been my boss. Or perhaps, more accurately, had I not slept with Derek Shepherd and then had him turn out to be my boss.

When I'd seen Katie's body bucking and seizing on that bed, all I could think about were those blue eyes, so full of disappointment. My ears had rung with all the things he would say, all the things he would do if he were here; if he knew that I hadn't been there right away. He was everywhere; every time I turned a corner, I half-hoped—and half-dreaded—that his would be the first face I'd see. And, of course, I couldn't stop thinking about the sex; the one-night stand that had become so much more than that. I wished I'd never slept with him, that way I wouldn't have to try so hard to block the image of him leaning over me, naked, lips inches away from mine. I would have to try so hard not to stare at those lips, and suppress the memories of what they felt like pressed against mine. "I'm sorry, Dr Shepherd. It won't happen again. I promise."

"Good." Derek still seemed distracted. I wanted to leave, to escape this awkward conversation, but at the same time, I craved Derek's presence like some kind of drug. "You really thought you were the last person that I would want to see right now?" He looked at me in amazement, and my heart skipped a beat.

"Well, after everything that happened with Katie…" I'm not the last person Derek would want to see right now? What does that mean? _Well, he did ask you out,_ the little voice in the back of my head chided.

Derek just shook his head. "Believe me Meredith, you are far from the last person that I would want to see right now."

"Oh." I wasn't sure what to say. Was he flirting with me again? I had no idea, and his face was still so infuriatingly unreadable; all I could tell from it was that he needed to get a better night's sleep tonight. _And why is he so tired?_ the little voice asked deviously. I cursed my subconscious. The last thing I needed right now was more inappropriate fantasies about my boss. I had to be the bigger person here.

Mercifully, my pager went off, ending the long awkward silence, and giving me an excuse to look away from those hypnotic blue eyes. "It's Dr Bailey. I have to go."

"Right." Derek nodded, as if woken from a dream. He still looked troubled; this Katie thing must really have been getting to him.

_Thank God for Dr Bailey._ I counted my blessings as I hurried off down the hall. _If I had to spend one more moment with Derek Shepherd, I'd…well, I don't know what would have happened. _

"Meredith!"

It was all I could do not to swear out loud as Derek called me back. _You spoke too soon,_ the little voice gloated.

"I wanted to apologize for earlier. I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. I was worried about Katie, and stressed because her condition is getting worse by the minute and I have no idea what is wrong, but I shouldn't have kicked you out like that. It wasn't your fault she was coding, and she probably would have coded even if you'd answered your page on time."

This took me by surprise. Most attendings didn't apologize for snapping at interns; they normally enjoyed terrorizing them. _Maybe he feels bad because he had sex with you and then raked you over the coals_, the little voice suggested. I ignored it. There had to be something that could be done to help Katie. Derek would kill himself with worry if they didn't find something quickly. _And then there'd be no more sex for you_. I could picture my subconscious smirking. "Shut up," I muttered.

"What?" Derek asked.

"Nothing," I replied hastily, cheeks flaming. "You know," I said, thinking quickly to recover from the embarrassment of having my boss hear me talking to myself, "maybe all you need is a second opinion. For Katie, I mean," I added quickly, seeing the look of confusion on Derek's face. "After all, two heads are better than one right?" And with that, I jogged away, hoping to God that I wouldn't have to cross paths with Dr Shepherd for the rest of the day.

* * *

The day hadn't gotten any better.

I had thought, after everything that had happened with Katie that things were bound to get better, but they had only gotten worse. Derek must have considered my suggestion, because he'd called all the interns into a meeting, telling them whoever could successfully diagnose Katie would get to scrub in on the surgery. So all of the interns had spent the whole day frantically trying to diagnose Katie in the hopes of getting in on an advanced procedure— everyone that is except me, which was why I'd teamed up with Cristina. Ours had been a foolproof plan: we diagnose the problem and Cristina scrubs in on the surgery. We even found the cause: Katie had a ruptured aneurysm that had caused a subarachnoid bleed. Everything had seemed to be working out perfectly, until Derek had picked me for the surgery. After that, Cristina stopped talking to me, George bombed his appendectomy, and I was left facing 5 hours in the OR with Derek Shepherd.

Because of everything that had happened, I couldn't have waited downstairs because Izzie and Cristina were down there; the on-call rooms were probably all in use—Bailey said the attendings normally took them—and I hadn't wanted to hang out in the locker room like some loser. So I'd wandered the halls for an hour or so and pretended I had somewhere to be every time people looked at me until it was finally time to go to the OR.

Derek said he'd picked me because he thought I was talented, not because I had slept with him, and I should have been thrilled to have the opportunity to scrub in on a major procedure on my first shift, but I still hadn't been able to help feeling bad about taking the surgery. I had promised it to Cristina.

But now, having seen the surgery, I was having difficulty feeling any kind of guilt at all. Cristina certainly wouldn't have had she been in my shoes, and besides, she was speaking to me now. _Sort of._

It had been a long forty-eight hours, and I was more than ready to go home. My feet hurt, my neck hurt, my eyes burned, and I was more exhausted than I could ever remember being, and not just physically exhausted but mentally as well. All I wanted was to go home, have a long, hot bath, and go to bed, but I couldn't just yet. With a groan, I remembered having promised my mother that I would go and visit her after my first shift. Not that she would remember anyways, but I still felt bad for not going. This would have been a big deal to her. Besides, I had decided to keep the house, and since it was still technically her house, she should know. So as all the other interns were chatting and complaining about their first shift and saying how nice it was going to be to go home and sleep, I packed my things in silence and headed out to the elevators, trying to mentally wake myself up enough to be able to drive to the nursing home and tell my mother all about my first day as a surgical intern.

The elevator doors opened and I suppressed a groan. Derek Shepherd was leaning against the railing at the back of the elevator. Had I not been so tired, I would have taken the stairs. The last thing I wanted was an elevator ride with my entirely too attractive boss, who I'd already slept with.

Derek glanced up and that McDreamy smile flashed across his face as he saw me. I felt my heart flutter. Oh God. This was going to be the longest elevator ride of my life.

I figured it was better to say nothing. I would just stand at the front of the elevator, minding my own business, until it was time to get off. Thankfully, Derek wasn't going to the lobby. He was still in his scrubs and I was glad he wasn't going home just yet; otherwise he probably would have walked me to my car.

"Heading out, Meredith?" So much for minding my own business.

"Yeah." I kept my eyes firmly focused on the elevator doors in front of me. If I turned and looked at him, it was all over.

"Pretty exciting first shift, huh?" I could hear the smile in his voice. Even picturing that smile made my heart beat a little faster. _You should just go out with him,_ that little voice at the back of my mind whined. _Then you can enjoy that smile…and more. _I tried hard to ignore it. I was not going out with Derek Shepherd. That was not happening again.

"It was all right," I replied, trying to keep the smile off my face and failing.

"You know," Derek began, and I could tell from the overly friendly, slightly suggestive tone that whatever he was going to say was definitely going to be inappropriate, "Watching you in that OR was a huge turn on."

"Dr Shepherd!" I exclaimed, trying to preserve some sense of dignity, though at the same time slightly flattered that he'd noticed. "That's inappropriate. Besides, I wasn't doing anything in the OR. I was just observing," I added, turning to face him.

Derek smiled. "You're just so cute in scrubs."

"Dr Shepherd—"

"Is that all you can say to me? Dr Shepherd?" Derek teased, eyes twinkling with a wicked mirth that made me want to shove him up against the back of the elevator and kiss him until we were both senseless, which was not going to help the current situation.

"No," I replied indignantly, trying very hard to think about Katie's surgery and not the very sexy surgeon standing behind me telling me he thought I looked cute in scrubs, which were possibly the most unflattering things in the world. Izzie had remarked that they were probably made that way to discourage office romances. If so, they must have made some fatal design flaw with mine. Either that, or Derek was just crazy. "I just—this is inappropriate."

"So you've said. Have dinner with me, Meredith."

"No." I turned away, unable to keep my cool while looking at him.

"Why not? I'm a nice guy, Meredith."

"You're my boss, that's why. It's not professional! And besides, I'm not attracted to you." I adjusted the strap of my bag and glanced at the floor display. The tiny number three was illuminated. Seriously? We'd only travelled two floors? This had to be the slowest elevator I'd ever ridden.

"It didn't seem that way two nights ago," Derek said, coming up behind me. I could feel his breath on my ear. Involuntary shivers travelled up and down my spine. "You seemed to be pretty attracted to me then."

"I was drunk," I replied stubbornly.

"Which is why I think we should try this again when we're not inebriated," Derek murmured into my hair, hands rising to touch my hips. His fingers skimmed lightly underneath the hem of my blouse, feather-light touch leaving a trail of tingling skin in its wake. I was finding it incredibly hard to pay attention to anything.

My breath hitched. "No." I tried, and failed, to sound cold and detached. My voice came out strangled and breathless instead. The rational part of my brain reminded me that I was not going down this road. I already had a hard enough time of it being Ellis Grey's daughter. I was not going to be the intern who was sleeping with her attending. The irrational part of my brain—which currently held the majority—had other ideas.

Thankfully, the elevator doors opened before Derek could cause me to lose complete control.

"I believe this is your stop, Dr Shepherd," I said as coolly as I could muster.

"Unfortunately," Derek agreed, brushing past me. My skin tingled like a live wire where we touched. "Until next time, Dr Grey."

I breathed a sigh of relief when the elevator doors closed. I had a plan: stay as far away from Derek Shepherd as possible. I couldn't afford to get involved with someone right now, and besides, the feelings I had were dangerous. I was playing with fire, and I couldn't risk getting burned.


	2. Kiss Me

**I dithered for a long time about the prospect of putting an OR scene in this chapter. Normally, I don't write scenes that actually happen during a surgery because I am not a doctor, and I loathe research. For this chapter, though, I really felt like I couldn't skip over the bit in the OR, especially since this is one of two moments mentioned in Derek's proposal which aren't covered in the show (the other one being where she has to hold the retractor for seven hours, but that's coming up later) so nobody actually knows what happened during those surgeries. I also thought there was just so much potential for them to be subtly (and not so subtly) flirting in the OR. I did look up the procedure and watched some videos of them actually being performed (which were very cool, by the way), in order to try and make it as accurate as possible, but, again, I am not a doctor, so please forgive any errors I may have made. Also, remember, the medicine isn't really the focus of the chapter! **

**This chapter is also much longer than the first one because it's new material! **

**Happy reading!**

* * *

_Kiss me beneath the milky twilight_

_Lead me out on the moonlight floor_

_Lift your open hand_

_Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance_

_Silver moon sparkling_

_So kiss me_

Kiss Me – Sixpence None The Richer

* * *

_ Derek gestures to another scan, this one pinned up right next to Katie's. I suppress a giggle. He reminds me of my gross anatomy professor at Dartmouth who always walked around the classroom gesturing at diagrams of organs with a pointer. "And this one right here is a cerebral cyst. Tough save, but we did it. I kissed you in the stairwell after the surgery."_

_ My smile widens at this one. It wasn't long after I plucked up the courage to meet Derek at that coffee shop. We weren't really dating, and we certainly hadn't had sex since that first time, but Derek was lobbying hard for a second date. A "real date" he said. As if meeting for lunch at a French café wasn't considered a real date. I knew the kind of date he meant, the take-you-out-to-dinner-at-some-swanky-restaurant-with-flowers-and-music-and-candlelight kind of date, but I just wasn't ready for that yet. Despite my resistance, though, Derek refused to be deterred, which made for an interesting time of it at work…_

* * *

**Right before 1x05 – Shake Your Grove Thing.**

Being an intern was gruelling. In med school, they always told you it was hard work, but they never really said how hard. They didn't tell you that your whole body would ache for days after being on your feet for forty-eight hours, or that you'd still feel as exhausted when you woke up as you did when you went to bed, not matter how much sleep you had gotten.

The thing I hated the most about a forty-eight hour shift was the down time. It was easy to ignore the exhaustion when you were busy looking after patients or standing in the back of an OR, observing one of the top surgeons in the country saving someone's life, but when you were on hour 26 of a 48-hour shift, with nothing better to do than sit on a gurney in the tunnels doing nothing, it was hard to ignore the fact that your whole body was aching and you hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep in the last month.

"I hate this," Cristina mumbled angrily, crushing an empty bag of chips in her fist. "I mean we're supposed to be busy doing stuff, you know like monitoring patients, or suturing, or scrubbing in on amazing surgeries. We're not supposed to be sitting around doing _nothing_."

I nodded in agreement, letting my head rest against the wall. It was true that I despised just sitting down here, waiting for something to happen, but, contrary to Cristina, I wasn't wishing for an exciting surgery or a new patient to look after. I was dreaming of home, of a long, hot bath, and the softness of my pillow. I was dreaming of a morning where I wasn't woken at five o'clock in the morning to the incessant beeping of the alarm. I hadn't had a day off since the day where I went to meet Derek at the café last week because I'd agreed to pick up Izzie's overnight shift yesterday so that she could catch up on some sleep before her boyfriend arrived, and I was paying the consequences. To think that I could have been have been at home right now, asleep in bed, instead of here in the hospital made the exhaustion even worse.

Cristina's watch alarm beeped suddenly, jolting both of us out of our misery. "Five o'clock," she said briskly, jumping to her feet. "Rounds start in an hour." And with that she hurried off. Despite the fact that we were sort of best friends, she was still determined to snag all of the best cases. Had I not been so tired, I would have chased after her and tried to get my hands on some of those cases, but I was too tired to care at this point.

I paid bitterly for the decision not to chase her, as it meant that instead of taking the first elevator, which was packed with hospital staff coming in for rounds, I was stuck on the second one, which was empty except for Derek Shepherd.

He grinned when he saw me, that full-on McDreamy smile that—even tired as I was—made my insides turn to jelly. Part of me was tempted to smile back, but he would take that as an invitation to start flirting with me, and I was in no mood for that this morning. I was too busy trying to keep myself awake; I didn't want to have to worry about flirting with McDreamy too.

He'd already pressed the button for the third floor, so I just stood back and watched the doors close, making sure to keep my distance. He was standing at the back, engrossed in his phone, so hopefully he would just leave me alone. I wasn't anticipating that to be the case; Derek was not one to pass up an opportunity to flirt, but that didn't stop me from hoping.

"I thought you had the day off today."

I sighed, reminded again of the stupidity of my decision to help out my roommate. "I traded shifts with Izzie. Her boyfriend's coming home tomorrow, and she wanted to catch up on her sleep before her gets here."

"How gallant of you." Derek paused thoughtfully. "Didn't you have a forty-eight hour shift earlier this week?"

"Yeah." I groaned. "Remind me never to do it again."

Derek chuckled. "I saw Cristina dashing to catch the other elevator. Was she on the overnight too?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"And you're going to let her steal all the good cases before everyone else gets here?" There was a challenge in Derek's tone, but even that wasn't enough to spur me into action.

"Honestly, I'm too tired to care what she does," I admitted wearily. "I just want to go home and sleep and never have to come to work again."

"You don't mean that," Derek teased. "Who am I going to flirt with if you're not here?"

I couldn't help laughing a little bit at this. "I'm sure you'll find someone. There are plenty of women here who wouldn't mind flirting with you."

"Really? I hadn't noticed." I wasn't sure if he was joking or not. I wanted to ask him about it—could he really be oblivious to the effect he had on women?—but the elevator arrived at the third floor before I could say anything else. We both stepped off the elevator, him turning towards the left, and me to the right.

"I'll see you around, Derek." I hated to leave, to have to go and face the rest of the interns. Flirting with Derek made me temporarily forget the exhaustion consuming me, and the thought of work made it all come rushing back again.

"Oh you bet you will." He winked. "Hang in there, Meredith."

_Let's hope_, I thought to myself.

* * *

After witnessing the state of my mental faculties after rounds, Bailey had put me on scut all morning. I'd been able to snag a nap during the afternoon—forsaking my lunch break—but the three hour of shut-eye—which had been more than sufficient to restore me to my former wakefulness—had cost me dearly: Bailey, unimpressed when I didn't return to my scut duties after lunch—apparently I was supposed to do it for the whole day and not just the morning—had me running labs and charting all afternoon. So now, at eight o'clock, I was more than ready to go home, eat something, have a hot bath, and go to sleep. Cristina might even be able to tempt me with a drink at Joe's.

Despite his promise this morning, I hadn't seen Derek all day. For once, I actually wished I had; flirting with him a little bit certainly would have made my day _somewhat_ interesting. Who knows, he might even have felt bad for me and let me scrub in on one of his surgeries; I'd noticed that he had a craniotomy on the board for this afternoon.

I'd promised Izzie and Cristina that I would meet them in the locker room, where, as usual, Cristina would try to persuade us to go to Joe's. Tonight, Izzie would probably say no—what with her boyfriend arriving tomorrow, she was going to want an early night tonight. Normally, I would say yes, but the thought of food, bath, and bed was entirely too tempting.

"Meredith?"

My finger hadn't even touched the button the call the elevator when I heard my name. I knew before I turned around what I was going to see: Derek, hurrying towards me, face already shifting into his trademark smile.

"Derek." His name came out more like a sigh. It was nice to see him, and my heart was still fluttering away—a sure sign that I was falling for him according to Izzie—but it would have been so much nicer had he bumped into me a few hours earlier. At this point, I had spent the better part of three days in the hospital. I wanted to go home.

"Listen." There was some hesitation in his voice, which struck me as odd; Derek wasn't the type to be unsure of himself. "I know you're probably tired and your shift is technically over, but I've got a cerebral cyst in OR 4 in an hour, and I really need an intern. It'll be a great learning experience," he said, smiling hopefully.

Derek's proposition had me conflicted. On the one hand, I loathed the idea of delaying my departure home by another two hours. On the other had, after the day that I had had, the thought of observing one of the world's foremost neurosurgeon's removing a cyst was like telling a five year-old that it was Christmas. I hadn't been inside an OR in a week, and, considering I was in Bailey's bad books, God only knew when another chance would come my way.

"Why me? Why not ask one of the other interns on shift?" I had every intention of doing the surgery, but I wanted to make Derek's life a little bit more difficult. Playing games with him was so much fun.

"I don't want anyone else. I want you. Consider it a...pick-me-up after a miserable day." It seemed that he had caught on.

"You heard about my bad day?" Was it impossible to have _any_ privacy here?

"No, but I figured, seeing as you were so tired this morning, that it couldn't have been a good one."

"Well, you were right." I sighed, pushing some stray pieces of hair out of my face.

"So are you in? I promise it'll be worth your while," he said, winking.

I shook my head at him, biting back a smile. A surgery with Derek: full of interesting techniques and subtle flirting? Who would say no to that? It would be a learning experience in so many ways. "I'm in."

So much for the early night.

* * *

It was almost nine o'clock. My 48-hour shift had officially ended nearly an hour ago, and, as I walked down to the OR floor, I began to understand why Mom had never exactly been around when I was a kid. It was nearly impossible to resist the rush that followed a surgery, especially when you were operating with someone like Derek Shepherd. In fact, when you threw in the added bonus of Derek Shepherd, it was impossible to resist.

I hadn't had time to go back o the residents lounge—I'd had to go straight to pre-op to prep Derek's patient—so I hadn't been able to tell Cristina that I wasn't going to be able to meet her at Joe's. I didn't think that she was going to be too bothered, based on how things had gone today, she probably wouldn't be expecting me to be up for a drink anyways. She only asked out of habit.

There was nobody in the OR hallway. Very few elective surgeries happened at this time of night, and I couldn't help but wonder to myself as I headed to OR 4 why it was that Derek was doing the procedure now. Why not earlier in the day? Who wanted to wait that long to have their cyst removed?

All of the possible reasons for why an elective surgery would be scheduled so late floated out of my head as I shouldered open the door to the scrub room. Derek was already at the sink, reaching over to turn on the tap, but he froze as he saw me, a lazy grin spreading over his features. I groaned inwardly. How was I supposed to get through a whole hour in the OR with this man? _Well, if you don't, it wouldn't be the end of the world,_ the little voice in the back of my head whispered naughtily. _Shut up,_ I snapped, trying to squash it. Losing control with Derek Shepherd in the OR during the middle of a procedure wasn't going to solve any of my problems.

"You ready?" Derek asked casually, as if he were just any other attending preparing for any other cyst removal with any other intern.

I nodded, trying to wash up as briskly as I could. I was wary of his intentions, especially since he was trying to pretend that everything was perfectly normal between us. That was a bad sign. "I've never assisted on a cyst removal before."

"Really?" There was something about Derek's grin that makes me nervous, and, at the same time, the way it made his eyes dance playfully made my stomach flutter. "Well this is going to be fun then."

"Should I be afraid?" I asked boldly, turning off the water.

Derek's eyebrows arched skyward. "Afraid? Of what?"

"You," I replied.

Now he began to chuckle, undoubtedly finding me highly amusing. "Me? Why would you be afraid of me?"

"Well, you say that the fact that this is my first time assisting or observing a cyst removal is going to make this fun. You're not going to try any funny business in the OR, are you, Dr Shepherd?"

He shook his head. The surgical mask may have obscured his face, but I could tell from the way his eyes twinkled that he found me incredibly amusing. "There won't be any funny business, Dr Grey."

"Good," I said, not sure whether or not I believed him. After all, his definition of funny business and mine might be two completely different things.

All if my worries disappeared when I heard the hiss of the OR doors opening. Whether or not Derek was going to be all flirty and inappropriate for the next hour was irrelevant to me now. I could feel the exhilarating rush that accompanied that first step into the OR, the high caused by the prospect of a surgery. Derek could say whatever he wanted, and I probably wouldn't care. Given the time of day, the gallery was empty, so I'd probably get to do a little more than just observing. I might be sacrificing some beauty sleep, but this was a great learning opportunity. I couldn't help feeling that despite her reservations, my mother would be proud of me.

"All right people." Derek was grinning from ear to ear. The thought of surgery seemed to excite him as much as it excited me. "It's a beautiful night to save lives. Let's get started."

Every surgeon has their quirks, their own little superstitions and rituals before and after surgery. My mother always used to flex her fingers to make sure that they wouldn't cramp up during the procedure. Dr Burke cracks his neck. Derek's is that saying. _It's a beautiful night to save lives_. He always said it with a grin and his infectious good humor, but there was a note of seriousness to it, too. We're here to save someone's life. Without us, the patient will die. We're buying them more time, maybe even a whole life.

Thinking about surgery ultimately led to me thinking about my mother, and what she would say if she knew about Derek and me. I had told her that night after my first shift, but she hadn't been lucid, so there was no way she would have remembered what I had told her. She hadn't even known I was her daughter. The real Ellis Grey wouldn't be pleased, though. She'd go on about how this was unprofessional and how I didn't have time to let relationships get in the way of my career. She'd tell me I was a disappointment, which was no surprise. I'd spent my whole life disappointing her.

"Having a nap, Dr Grey?"

I jumped, jolted back to the present. Derek was grinning at me from behind his scrub cap, eyes sparkling teasingly. While I'd been lost in thought, he'd been busy opening up the patient, and was about to begin tackling the cyst.

"If I'd known you were this tired, I would have let you go home," he continued with false seriousness.

"I'm fine, Dr Shepherd," I replied hastily, fixing my gaze on the patient. Marcus Evans was eleven, and—as I'd discovered while taking him through his pre-op checks—was a huge baseball fan and was the possessor of an infectious smile—not unlike Derek's—and the most adorable dimples I had ever seen. It was strange to see him lying so limp on the table, dimples lost to the anesthesia, getting his head cut open. It was the first surgery I'd scrubbed in on that was done on a child, and I was surprised by how helpless and tiny he looked on the table. "I was just...thinking."

"About what?" he pressed, eyes glinting wickedly.

_Not about _that_, Dr Shepherd._ "It's just that this is the first surgery I've seen on a child. I'm just trying to take it all in."

"Well you can take it in much better from over here. Come take a closer look."

I could feel the anticipation thrumming in my veins as I stepped closer to the patient. This was what I was meant to do. This was my calling. Because of us, this kid would go on to have a long, happy life.

It wasn't my first time seeing someone's brain, but I was still as much in awe of it now as I had been the first time I had scrubbed in with Derek on Katie Bryce's craniotomy. To think that what I was seeing in front of my eyes was the control centre of the whole human body was...well, breathtaking.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Derek asked, his own voice full of wonder.

I nodded, not sure how to sum up what I was feeling. "Yeah."

"And it'll be even more beautiful once we fix it. Forceps." The assertiveness with which Derek spoke was unsettling. I couldn't understand exactly where all of his confidence was coming from; the part of me that wasn't completely awestruck by the brain sitting in front of me was panicking at the thought of me actually being asked to touch it—what if I killed the patient? Sure, he had years of experience on me, but that didn't make him a god. It didn't mean that he never made mistakes.

"Am I amusing you, Dr Grey?"

I started slightly, not realizing that I had been staring at Derek the whole time. I had never been more grateful for my surgical mask; it masked the flush that spread across my cheeks. The last thing I wanted was to be caught staring at my boss, especially when I was trying to vehemently convince everyone—especially myself—that there was nothing going on between us. "You're awfully confident," I said carefully.

He chuckled, not looking up from Marcus' open skull flap. "I've been doing this for a long time, Dr Grey," he replied. "Would you like to hold the retractor for me? Bokey needs to keep her hands free."

I blinked, surprised. I hadn't even been working here two weeks, and yet here Derek was treating me like I was already a resident. Most attendings let the interns observe and called on them occasionally, but we didn't normally get to help out on procedures until we had been working here a little longer. I also knew, regardless of what he said, that Bokey was more than capable of holding the retractor. She'd been a scrub nurse for years and didn't need her hands free for anything. "Okay," I said slightly warily, not sure if he was just doing this so that I would be more inclined to accept his invitations to dinner in the future. Bokey moved to the side so that I could slip in and place my hands where hers had been. The retractor was narrow and cool beneath my fingers, and I couldn't help feeling excited, and also nervous. I'd just had much more responsibility thrust on my shoulders. I wasn't just a casual observer anymore. One slip up, and Marcus could be permanently brain dead.

Derek glanced at me briefly, before turning his attention back to Marcus. "You don't seem too thrilled. I thought you'd be excited to get to hold the retractor the whole time."

"I am. I'm thrilled to be able to assist," I replied automatically, afraid that he would get me to step back again. I wanted to help out as much as I could with this, hell, I would perform the surgery myself if I knew how.

"But..."

Damn him for being able to read me so well. "I can't help feeling there's some kind of ulterior motive to this. Like I'm going to have to pay up later or something."

Derek shrugged. "I've done this procedure many times before. You, on the other hand, are experiencing this for the first time. So I say, why not make it more enjoyable?" He paused, eyes sparkling wickedly. "Though if you want to pay up, I won't say no."

"Dr Shepherd!" I couldn't help the blush that spread across my cheeks, well aware that the scrub nurses and OR techs—though silent—were hearing every word I was. The hospital gossip mill was going to have a field day tomorrow. If this kept up, not only would I become a pariah, but I might actually get kicked out of the program. Which was not something that I could afford to happen. My pride would take too much of a beating for that too be acceptable.

"I love it when you say that, you know. It's very cute," he said calmly, as if he were simply asking me for more suction and not telling the whole OR that I was turning him on. "Like those little ineffectual fists of yours." He glanced briefly at the fists in question, one of which clenched reflexively, as if poised to strike him, and I could see the glimmer in his eyes. He was enjoying this entirely too much.

I was really having difficulty refraining from attacking him. "Yeah, well those ineffectual fists might become quite effectual if you're not careful," I snapped, wishing that he would stop this. As exciting getting to assist on a craniotomy was, I was seriously beginning to regret agreeing to this.

His eyes widened teasingly, as if I had stabbed him. "Have you nothing nice to say about me, Dr Grey?" he asked, feigning hurt.

"I might, if you actually behaved," I replied. Handsome and charming and irresistible as he was, this whole not-so-secret public flirting thing had to stop. People—namely Bailey and the other interns—were starting to get suspicious, especially Cristina, who already knew about our past history. I couldn't stay away from him no matter how hard I tried, but I didn't want this—whatever it was we had to get in the way of work. Not to mention the fact that I was dying of embarrassment at the thought that everyone else in the OR could hear what he was saying and that it would no doubt be all over the hospital by tomorrow.

"You're right."

I blinked, surprised at the sudden turn the conversation had taken. "What?" _He's been flirting with me almost non-stop since my first day here. Why the sudden change of heart?_

"My behaviour towards you has been less than professional, Dr Grey. I'd like to apologize," he said seriously, gaze completely focused on Marcus' brain.

"Well..." I wasn't quite sure what to say. Thank you? Apology accepted?

"In fact, let me take you out to dinner to make it up to you." He was still looking at Marcus' open skull flap, but I could see his trademark grin twinkling in those blue eyes. "Say Friday night?"

"You're incorrigible."

"Really? Most people think I'm very charming. They think my sense of humour is my best feature."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm not most people."

"No," he murmured, expression becoming more serious. "That you're not."

His words caught me by surprise, so much so that I almost dropped the suction tube. _You're not most people._ What was that supposed to mean? Was he—oh God was he serious about me? Did he want this thing we had to become something more? Thoughts swirled around my head at a dizzying rate. This wasn't happening. We'd barely even known each other two weeks. Things weren't supposed to get serious yet. In fact, they weren't supposed to get serious ever. At least, that's the way it normally was, but I had the feeling that normal wasn't going to work with Derek. My classic sleep-with-you-once-and-never-see-you-again had completely blown up in my face, and I was possibly willing to be open to something different, but this was too much. I clenched my free hand into a fist, fighting the urge to bolt from the room as fast as I could.

"Meredith?" Derek's voice pierced through my inner panic, full of concern. "Meredith, are you all right?"

I wanted to answer him, but there weren't any words to express what I was feeling. _Was I all right?_ I hadn't the faintest idea. All I knew was that I was trying very hard not to leave now and possibly relocate to another state under an assumed name.

"Meredith?" He turned away from Marcus for one second, blue eyes boring into mine as if he were staring right into my soul. I got the feeling that he understood that he had said something wrong, but wasn't sure what.

And just like that, everything changed.

* * *

I fled as soon as the surgery was finished. It was childish, and highly embarrassing when I actually stopped to think about it, but I couldn't spend one more minute in that OR. The cyst removal was supposed to have taken an hour, and ended up taking two because of some unexpected bleeders—which may or may not have been caused by Derek's lack of attention to the patient. Marcus was going to make a full recovery, but there had been many moments in there when we had both thought the opposite. I knew Derek would want me to go and talk to Marcus' parents with him, possibly so that he could say what a great help I had been in saving their son's life, and how he couldn't have done it without me—which is bullshit. He is a world-class neurosurgeon, after all—but I couldn't. I could barely stand, let alone smile and accept thanks from a little boy's parents when I was the reason there had been any problems in the first place. If Derek had been with anyone else, he never would have been distracted, and none of this would have ever happened. Because of me—because of us—a little boy had almost died.

At the time, of course, I wasn't thinking about that. At the time, I had been calm, which seemed to catch Derek by surprise—he must have assumed that I, like every other intern, would be panicking. I had never been the panicking type—certainly not in a crisis—but afterwards, I felt like my legs were going to give out. It all seemed to hit me as I finished closing—Derek, as a reward, had let me put in the staples—: Marcus could have died. The surgery had been exhilarating, and I wasn't going to forget it any time soon, but it was the first time I'd scrubbed in on a surgery where there had been any kind of serious complications. And it was my fault.

"Meredith!"

I froze, halfway down the stairs. After having taken a few moments on the upper landing to compose myself, I'd decided to head to the locker room, get changed, and go home, hopefully before Derek was finished in post-op. I didn't want to talk about what had happened in that OR, and I thought it was best if perhaps he and I just spent some time away from each other. Obviously, that wasn't going to be the case.

Before I could collect myself enough to bolt—which was the default response in my panicked brain—he was there, taking gentle hold of my elbow, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking of doing. I wanted to say something to him, maybe tell him to let me go, but the words got lost somewhere.

"Are you okay?"

I took a deep breath, resisting the urge to mumble, "Fine" and run. I had to say this. "We can't work together anymore."

Judging by the look on his face, this wasn't what he had been expecting. "What?"

"We can't do this, Derek. That little boy almost died in there because we—" I couldn't finish the sentence. I didn't even want to admit it out loud, partially because I was dreading it. Working with him was exhilarating, and it wasn't something I wanted to give up.

Derek face softened, full of understanding. "That wasn't your fault, Meredith. Depending on where the cyst is positioned, it can make it harder to deflate it without clipping a vessel. We also had no way of knowing that he had von Willebrand disease. His parents didn't even know that." He smiled, stroking my cheek gently. "It had nothing to do with you, Meredith. In fact, you're one of the reasons he's still alive."

I shook my head. "I'm just an intern, Derek. You can't say that."

He shrugged. "It's true. I needed that extra set of hands in there, and any other intern probably would have been panicking at all the blood. Not to mention you were the one who figured it out. He probably would have died otherwise." He paused, a grin slowly transforming his face. "We did it, Meredith."

Despite any of my earlier misgivings, I couldn't help feeling the giddy delight that accompanied a successful surgery. Derek was right, there was no way we could have known about the von Willebrand's, which had been the main reason for all the complications, not the fact that Derek nicked a vessel.

"We did, didn't we?" I couldn't help grinning like an idiot, too.

"Our first big save. You know, we should celebrate. What do you say to dinner on Friday?" he asked, winking.

I shook my head, marveling at his persistence. "I see what you're trying to do here. And the answer's still no. I'm not going out to dinner with you."

Derek frowned, eyes still twinkling. "Well, then, I suppose we'll just have to celebrate another way." And before I could do or say anything, he leaned in and kissed me.

At first, the kiss was gentle. Slow. There hadn't been any kissing since that fateful encounter in the elevator last week, though that didn't mean that we hadn't both been thinking about it. He tasted of mint and the faintest hint of coffee, and his hands cradled my face like it was made of glass. It was possibly the gentlest kiss I'd ever experienced.

Gentleness, however, isn't very satisfying, and certainly not when you've been thinking about this moment constantly for the last week. Not wanting to wait any longer, I latched onto a fistful of his scrub top and pulled him closer.

The reaction was instantaneous. One hand moved to grip my waist, trapping me against his chest, while the other tangled itself in my hair. My hands—eager to be busy themselves, slipped up underneath his scrubs, tracing the contours of his chest with my fingers. His tongue invaded my mouth with a force that took me by surprise, bringing back a rush of memories of us stumbling into the house in a mess of limbs and mouths and desire.

I wasn't even aware we were moving until my back slammed against the wall, Derek's hands pausing their brief explorations of my body long enough to lift me up, giving me no choice but to wrap my legs around his waist to keep from falling—not that I was complaining. We were now the same height, which made it easier for me to reach up and rake my hands through those dreamy, ebony curls, fingernails caressing his scalp. He groaned in my mouth, and proceeded to assault the inside of my mouth with renewed vigor while his hands slipped underneath both my scrub top and the shirt underneath, skimming across my stomach and around to slip underneath the back of my bra. I could feel his erection digging into my thigh.

He abandoned my mouth temporarily, moving to trail kisses down the side of my neck, inching dangerously close to the collar of my shirt. I knew exactly where this was going, and, while my desire-addled brain had no objection to it, the more rational part of me had no desire to be caught having sex with McDreamy in the stairwell.

"We—have to—stop," I gasped, squirming away from his touch, which was setting a wildfire across my skin. "Derek—we can't."

"Mmm," he mumbled, without halting his explorations of my collarbone.

"No, seriously," I hissed, desire rapidly disappearing at the thought of Bailey or the Chief walking in on us. "We can't do this here!"

Derek looked up now, grinning. "Where do you propose we go then, Dr Grey?"

"Nowhere," I replied, disentangling myself from his arms. "This isn't happening tonight. Period. If someone were to come in—"

He chuckled. "You know it's cute how flustered you get about this."

I smacked his shoulder, not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough to vent some of my frustration. "Ass. I'm being serious here."

"You were being very serious before, too. I wouldn't mind resuming that seriousness."

"You're impossible," I muttered, hastily attempting to adjust my top so it didn't look like I'd almost had sex in the stairwell with my attending. "I'm going to go home now."

"Now there's an idea," Derek said, eyes twinkling deviously. "We could actually do it in a bed this time."

"No." There was no way I was letting Derek Shepherd come back to my house. Not when I had roommates. "Not happening. I'll see you tomorrow, Dr Shepherd."

"Back to Dr Shepherd again," he asked, following me down the stairs. "I much prefer Derek."

"I know," I said, pausing with my hand on the door to the stairwell. "But it's not professional. And if we're going to do this, we have to be professional about it."

Derek's eyebrows rose, but he was grinning. "So we're actually doing this, are we now?"

I shrugged. "Maybe." And with a last grin and a wink, I fled, leaving him standing there agape.

* * *

**A/N: For those of you who may be wondering, von Willebrand's disease is a genetic disease that stops the blood from clotting, among other things.**


	3. On the Sly

** So since this chapter has the most borrowed dialogue out of all the chapters so far I'm going to put this up now, applicable to all past and future chapters of this story: I don't own Grey's Anatomy; it belongs to ABC and Shonda Rimes. I wish I owned it, but the reality is that if I did, there wouldn't be any need for me to write fanfiction because all this stuff would have happened on the show!**

** Also, thank you Juni for your lovely reviews! I'm glad you're liking this story. :)**

* * *

_You gotta put it on the line_

_Not just a nickel or a dime_

_You better hear the words I say_

_You know that I'm not here to play_

On The Sly – The Bamboos

* * *

_I barely have time to finish my recollection before Derek is moving on to the next CT. It reminds me of how focused he is all the time. In surgery, with patients, and even when he's proposing to me. His ability to stay focused on the task at hand is part of what makes him such a great surgeon._

_ "And this, this is where Dr Bailey kicked you out of surgery because she caught us in my car."_

_ I chuckle. There is an example of a time when Derek's wasn't as...focused as he should have been on the job. I can feel the emotions rising up again at the mention of that day: the terror of the wrath of Bailey, the giddy, childish excitement at doing something I knew I wasn't supposed to, and, mostly, the sense that this needed to stop. We couldn't keep going on like this, especially now that Bailey had caught us. We were only going to get ourselves into more trouble. Derek, as usual had different ideas about what we should do, but nothing ended up going the way either of us had planned..._

* * *

**During 1x06 – If Tomorrow Never Comes**

When you're in medical school, becoming a surgeon is the pinnacle of your career. You can't wait for the day that you are finally able to go out into the real world, hold a scalpel, and cut. What you don't realize, however, is that having the license to practice medicine on real live humans is terrifying. As I had discovered, though, there were other things even more terrifying. Getting caught having sex with your attending in his car by your resident was one of those things. Even being the daughter of the legendary Ellis Grey couldn't help me against the wrath of the Nazi.

I had thought, going in to work that first morning after the incident, that I would be a dead man. I was positive that Bailey was going to have my head, but all I got was the silent treatment. She still wasn't speaking to me, and that had me more worried than a month stuck doing scut.

I hadn't seen Derek since the night of the party. If I stayed out of his way and he stayed out of mine, hopefully, this would all blow over. In a couple of weeks Bailey would be back to hating me because I was an intern and not because I was the intern who slept with her attending. Hopefully.

My good luck in the avoidance department seemed to have run out. I hadn't even gotten out of my car on Saturday morning before he was there, getting out of his own car right next to me. He was standing less than a foot from me, so there was no chance of my slipping by him unseen. "Crap!" I cried, knowing that my day had just gone from bad to worse. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about last night with Derek, and I knew all too well the only thing he was going to want to talk about was last night.

"Crap," he repeated. His tone sounded both surprised and intrigued, but what could he possibly have been expecting? Sure, he may have been the head of Neurosurgery and therefore Bailey's boss, but she was my resident. She picked my assignments, and she was the one who works with me directly. She was the one who could change her mind and make my life a living hell, or worse, go to the Chief. Regardless of all the sweet-talking Derek was so good at, what we had been doing was definitely against the rules, and we could still get in get I serious trouble for it. I could lose my spot in the program, and Derek could lose his career, something that I didn't want to have on my head. I didn't want to be the one who cost Derek Shepherd his career, because then there would be no hope for us. He wouldn't love me if his career tanked after this, and I wouldn't blame him. I wouldn't love me if that were the case, which was why I had to stay away. Maybe when I was a resident, someone with more experience, then we would be able to make things work. But until then, it was safer for me to just stay away.

"Hi." My voice came out way higher than I intended it to. "I'm late," I added hastily, hoping that he would get the hint and leave me alone. The last thing I wanted was to be late. That was just adding insult to injury.

"You're avoiding me!" Derek exclaimed, chasing after me. He sounded pretty upset about that, and I couldn't understand why, after everything that had happened, he didn't see the need for us to quit while we were ahead. Though I wasn't sure that we were really ahead anymore.

"Yes," I admitted, lengthening my stride in the hopes of getting far enough ahead that he would leave me be, "but also late."

"Are-are we going to talk about this?" he said quietly, falling into step beside me. There was a hint of worry in his tone and I realized that he had been doing some thinking about this too.

"No." I was surprised at how firm I sounded.

"About us and Bailey and what she saw," he continued urgently, ignoring my reply.

"I don't need to talk about it," I said curtly. His refusal to just let this go was frustrating. "I experienced it. Naked."

At the mention of my lack of clothing, a very wicked grin spread across his face. His demeanour had completely shifted; there was no more worry about what ifs, instead he was back to his usual playful, flirtatious self. "This is getting complicated."

I couldn't believe him. Turning this all into some kind of excuse for him to flirt with me again. What a man. "Complicated for me! I'm the intern sleeping with the attending. Bailey isn't speaking to me anymore!"

"Not that that's a bad thing." Derek's tone made it very clear that he thought I was overreacting. What a hypocrite! He was the one all worried about this five minutes ago. "If I was a better guy, I'd walk away."

"Yes, you would." And all my problems would be solved._ Well, not _all_ your problems,_ the little voice in the back of my head purred. I tried very hard to ignore it. I couldn't be thinking about the great sex with Derek when I was trying to push him away.

Derek frowned, as if something had just dawned on him. "Do you want me to be a better guy?"

I couldn't help the tiny smile that crossed my face, as I realized that I had Derek Shepherd sitting in the palm of my hand. He obviously didn't want to be the better guy, but if I told him that was what I wanted, he'd do it. I could tell him to pound sand and solve all my problems. I wouldn't have to worry about avoiding him anymore, because there wouldn't be any us to worry about. "Yes."

As soon as I saw the look on Derek's face, however, I realized the implications of what I had just said. "No." I wasn't ready to let him go just yet. The rational part of me knew that the best thing for us to do was to discontinue this...thing between us, but, in this case, the irrational part of me far outweighed the rational.

"Crap," I mumbled, as Derek stepped closer towards me, that sexy McDreamy smile spreading across his face. Now Iwas in the palm of _his_ hand. "I'm late."

"Take your time," he called as I walked off towards the stairs. No way was I taking the elevator today. "Think about it." But, judging by the smile on his face, we both knew that he had won.

* * *

The silent treatment continued well into the morning. I wasn't sure which I preferred more: her silence or her yelling. The yelling wasn't pleasant, but Bailey wasn't the type to remain silent, either.

I'd thought that we'd be able to get through rounds without incident—and by without incident, I meant without any more incidents. I knew that Bailey was going to call on me, and all of the other interns seemed to have figured this out as well by now. None of them knew why, but at least they had stopped staring. All of that went out the window, however, when I saw Derek standing in the next patient room, filling out a chart. I could feel the dread filling the pit of my stomach, but I couldn't help noticing how attractive he looked. The combination of the navy blue scrubs and the black long-sleeved top he had on underneath brought out not only his eyes but also his hair, and effectively turned my insides to jelly.

"Morning." Bailey's voice, normally cordial when greeting patients, was sour, no doubt because of Derek's presence.

Derek glanced up briefly from his chart, a sign that he wasn't at all uncomfortable with Bailey's presence. "Mr Levangie, this is Dr Bailey and our fine staff of surgical interns." He grinned over his chart, and, though I was making a point of keeping my eyes averted from his, I could tell that smile was directed my way. He was still looking at me when I finally raised my eyes, and from the uncomfortable expression on his face, I could tell that Bailey was watching both of us and wasn't the least bit impressed.

"Welcome to hell, kids."

Up until now, I hadn't even noticed the patient that we were supposed to be rounding on. Now that I did, I couldn't help feeling a little shocked. He was an older man, in his sixties at least, and obviously a victim of Parkinson's. His daughter was helping him into bed, which couldn't have been an easy task, given how his whole body was wracked with tremors. I couldn't help wondering why he was here, and why he was a neurological patient. They hadn't discovered a cure for Parkinson's.

"Who's presenting?" Bailey sounded almost bored. I wanted to present, to say _something,_ but based on Bailey's mood and the fact that Derek was here, I figured it was better to keep my mouth shut.

"Edward Levangie, sixty-three year-old man admitted for pain management for dyskinesia." George's voice is clear and authoritative. "He's been stable since last night and responding well to the bolus injections." _So that explains why he's here_.

Derek kept trying to catch my eye over Mr Levangie's bed. It was disconcerting, especially since Bailey was right there watching us. I may not have wanted him to be the better guy, but I didn't want him making things any worse than they already were either.

"Izzie, possible treatments?"

"For Parkinson's disease? Um, deep brain stimulation is shown to—"

"Not for Parkinson's," Derek interrupted. "For spinal pain."

Izzie looked panicked. "Well, um," she mumbled, reaching in her pocket for her note cards.

I couldn't stay silent now, especially when I knew the answer without having to go check it and Derek was looking at me like he expected me to say something. To hell with Bailey. I wasn't going to sacrifice my reputation as one of the top interns just because she was pissed about what happened between Derek and me. "Intra-spinal catheter. That way he can have constant pain medication."

He nodded, smiling slightly. "Excellent. This is Dr Grey," he said to Mr Levangie. "She's going to prep you for the procedure and assist."

There was a long silence. I couldn't have been more relieved when Derek's pager went off because it meant he wouldn't be staring at me anymore with that stupid smile on his face. "Excuse me." Still smiling, he exited the room.

Everyone—me included—watched him go, stunned. "You make yourselves busy. I'll catch up with you." I could tell from Bailey's tone that she was not at all impressed with what had just gone on.

I knew I should do something about this. I knew I should go up to Derek and tell him that he couldn't pick me, not today, not after everything that had happened, but at the same time, I wanted in on this surgery. I hadn't been in on a surgery since, well, since Bailey caught us in the car, and I really wanted to be able to observe something. Anything. So if it meant I'd have to face the wrath of Bailey for another few weeks, then that's what it would mean. Besides, it's not like Derek would let me opt out. Whether I liked it or not, I was stuck.

To play it safe, I decided to stay away from Derek until the surgery. He was spending most of the day with Bailey anyways, consulting on the lady who had come in with the giant tumour, so I thought that maybe if I stayed away, Bailey would forget about this morning, or at least not be so pissed about it. Unfortunately, Mr Levangie's daughter asked me to convince her father to consider brain stimulation so that he might be able to walk her down the aisle at her wedding next month, which meant that I needed to seek Derek out to get his opinion. I wasn't foolish enough to walk in there and try to convince Mr Levangie to undergo brain surgery without consulting the brain surgeon who'd be operating on him.

I found out from a nurse that Derek was in the exam room with Bailey and Burke, looking at Annie's scans. I waited inconspicuously by the door, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu. It wasn't too long ago that I'd stood like this outside Katie Bryce's room, waiting for Derek to emerge.

Burke came out first, and then Derek. He had his ferryboat scrub cap tied on his head, as if putting it on now would bring him luck in his upcoming surgeries, and was nursing a cup of coffee. I didn't really want to come up to him like this, especially since Bailey was probably right behind him, but I'd promised Mr Levangie's daughter that I would talk to him about surgery, and to do that, I needed to first talk to Derek.

"Dr Shepherd?" I tried to keep my voice calm and professional. "Mr Levangie. The Parkinson's patient. Is he a good candidate for DBS?"

Derek eyes flickered to something over my shoulder before replying, "Yes, but he's not interested." His voice was surprisingly cold.

"Okay, but I think it's worth talking to him again, pushing him."

"We're talking about a brain surgery that is performed while the patient is wide awake." Derek's tone is anything but friendly. "There is a risk a paralysis, a risk of death, and the patient doesn't want it. It's not my job to push him into anything, and it's definitely not yours." For a moment I couldn't understand why he was being so harsh, but then I caught a glimpse of Dr Bailey standing outside the exam room, watching. _He's showing Bailey that he's not favouring me_, I thought to myself. _But that doesn't mean he needs to lash out at me when I haven't done anything wrong._

"Okay," I began, immediately backing off, but at the same time hoping to be able to explain this to him more reasonably, or at least get him to talk to Mr Levangie's daughter, but Derek didn't let me.

"Since you're clearly uncomfortable with my decision in this case, it's probably best you don't scrub in."

_What?!_ Not scrub in? I could understand him being a little sharp with me because Bailey is watching, but kicking me off the case? That was uncalled for. "But—" I protested.

"It's a minor procedure," Derek snapped. "You won't be missed."

I couldn't believe it. I could understand him not wanting to favour me, but that meant that he shouldn't have put me on the case to begin with. Now that he'd chosen me, he couldn't just kick me off the case for no reason. He could talk to me, explain to me in private that he's taking me off the case so that Bailey won't make my life even worse than it already is, not yell at me for something perfectly reasonable. If it had been any other intern, he wouldn't have kicked them off the case, regardless of whether or not he agreed with the idea of pushing DBS. He didn't have to be such an ass about it. Honestly.

I'd told him I didn't want him to be the better man, but if this was his definition of a not better man, then I wasn't sure that I wanted him at all, regardless of what kind of man he was.

* * *

"Bailey was on a warpath. I was trying to protect you."

Derek leaned further across Mr Levangie's bed, trying to explain to me why he'd treated me the way he did outside the exam room. We were taking Mr Levangie back to his room, having successfully completed the DBS procedure.

After Derek had yelled at me outside the exam room, I'd decided to end it. It was the only thing left to do. I couldn't take this kind of abuse every day at work. Once I stopped seething after the way that Derek had treated me, however, it didn't seem like such an easy task. All I had to do was tell Derek that I wanted him to be a better man, that this was just too much for me to be dealing with in my intern year, but every time I decided to head off and do it, I couldn't. The thought of calling it off made me slightly nauseous. It was the right thing to do. It was the _only_ thing to do. So why was it so hard?

I was still mad at Derek for the way he had treated me. I hadn't deserved to be given the case, but I hadn't deserved to be beaten over the coals either. Ending our relationship wasn't going to be the best way for me to get my revenge, though. A better thing for me to do would be to persuade Mr Levangie to get the procedure, so that Derek would have no choice but to let me scrub in. At least that way, I would deserve to be in on the procedure.

Convincing Mr Levangie had actually been easier than I thought it would be, and the look on Derek face when I told him that Mr Levangie had agreed to do the procedure today was pretty priceless. Once he recovered from the shock, he'd actually looked quite pleased with me, like he was glad that I had risen to the occasion instead of backing off. And the surgery had been great. Being able to watch Mr Levangie's hands stop shaking and know that they were better because of what I had been able to do, what Derek and I had been able to do together, was a great feeling.

I understood that kicking me off the case was his way of protecting me from the wrath of Bailey, but he had gone about it the wrong way. If he had really wanted to protect me, he never would have put me on the case in the first place.

"You trying to protect me is why she's on a warpath," I replied, hoping I didn't sound too frustrated. It wasn't fair to blame all of this entirely on Derek, but he hadn't exactly helped matters. "You can't do me favours. You can't ask me to scrub in when I haven't earned it."

"Okay," Derek said quickly. "Okay." But I wasn't finished.

"And you can't treat me like crap when I haven't earned that either. I can take care of myself. I got myself into this mess, and I—"

"And you'll get yourself out?" Derek snapped incredulously. His eyes were full of accusations. _You're just going to end it like that without even telling me? You're just going to make all the decisions without consulting me?_

I sighed. That hadn't come out at all how I intended it to. All I had meant was that I could handle this myself. I didn't need him going out of his way to try and make things easier for me. "I—I don't know yet." I didn't want to leave Derek—that much had been proven this morning—but that didn't mean that my customary flight response hadn't completely disappeared. Things had gotten so complicated that the prospect or running was looking sorely tempting right now, regardless of how much I may or may not like Derek.

Derek's pager went off suddenly. Neither of us needed him to check it to know that it was Burke, calling him to help with Annie's tumour. They must have gotten over to the spine by now.

"Don't let me keep you," I said, unable to keep the teasing note out of my voice. Things were falling back into their old routine between us, as if everything this morning hadn't happened. The urge to flee as fast as I possibly could faded to the background again, though I wasn't stupid enough to think it was completely gone. It would be back. It always came back.

"You did great work here today." Derek's voice was gentle, and though his smile wasn't its usual full-blown McDreamy, it was kind.

Watching him walk away, I felt kind of bad for berating him the way I had at lunch. He had only been trying to protect me. Sure, he hadn't had the best way of going about it, but his intentions had been pure, and with a smile like that, it was impossible to stay mad at him for long. I sighed. "Dr Shepherd?"

"Yeah?" He turned, grinning at me.

"I'm sorry I called you a jackass," I said reluctantly.

Derek frowned, confused. "You didn't."

"I did," I admitted. "Twice."

Derek just shook his head incredulously.

"Tell you what Blondie," Mr Levangie said as Derek walked away. "If you don't marry him, I will."

I couldn't help grinning as I pushed the gurney into the elevator.

* * *

I had never been a fan of sunrises. There was something very romantic and lovely about them, and, well, romantic and lovely had never really been my thing. I had been awake for plenty of sunrises, but most of the time I was drunk, hung-over, or working. I'd just never been the sit-back-and-watch-the-sun-rise kind of girl.

Curled up here in the front seat of Derek's Jetta with his arms around me, my head resting against his chest, I had to admit this was kind of nice. I wouldn't mind doing this more often. Lying here with him made everything else fall away. It was so easy to forget about Bailey and my mother and what was going to happen when everyone found out about us, because that was bound to happen eventually. Everything happening outside didn't matter anymore. All that mattered was us. _Me and Derek. Derek and I._ I loved the way the words seemed to flow, and let them roll around my brain in an endless loop. _Derek and I. Derek and I. Derek and I. _

I could picture Izzie and Cristina's reactions to this. Cristina would shake her head in disgust at how I was letting a boy get in the way of my career, while Izzie would laugh and tell me that I'm really falling for him now. A month ago, that comment would have sent running with my tail between my legs. I didn't do attachments. My kind of relationship was the kind that lasted one night, maybe two, and was easily forgettable. Now, though, the thought of falling for Derek didn't seem so terrifying. I'd never admit it to Izzie, but I could see myself settling down with Derek and being quite happy with it. Possibly forever.

The sky was glorious, bursting with peach and gold and scarlet, with the sun rising like a giant, flaming orange in the middle of it all. The water of the bay spread out below, its dark, rippling surface peppered with slivers of crimson and rose and orange reflected from the sky. A lone ferryboat chugged through the water, lights sparkling in the pre-dawn, carrying the very first load of people into the city from the other side of the bay. I wondered if Derek was watching the water too, after all, I had promised him a spectacular view of the sunrise over the ferryboats, but the moment was too perfect to spoil. If Derek was missing this, well, that was his own fault.

As the day emerged in a splendid burst of colour, Mr Levangie's words echoed in my head. _If you don't marry him, I will._ Did I really want to marry Derek? Did I want to marry anyone? I'd always said that I didn't want to get married, especially after the disaster that was my parents' marriage, but after having met Derek, I wasn't sure anymore. When I looked into my future, the only sure thing I could see was Derek.

"What are you thinking about?" Derek murmured into my hair. He shifted slightly beneath me and pulled his arms a little tighter, effectively trapping me against his chest. It was a wonderful feeling, waking up in those arms. I felt safe there. Whole. Like I could go out into the world and make all sorts of mistakes and say and do all of the wrong things and it wouldn't matter because I would have Derek to come home to, and he would make it all go away.

I shrugged, snuggling against him. I wasn't so sure that my thoughts about marriage and my future—_our future_, the little voice whispered—were things that I wanted to share with Derek just yet. "Nothing. Just admiring the sunrise."

"Mmm," Derek rumbled, rubbing his hands lazily along my forearms. His fingers left trails of goosebumps along my flesh. "It is a lovely sunrise."

"You know, it would be lovelier if you were actually enjoying it," I said, squirming as his lips roamed across my throat. "You're missing the ferryboats." The lone ferry had disappeared from my line of vision; the white ripples across the water the only sign that it had ever been there.

"Ferryboat," he corrected, lips ceasing their assault on my skin. "There was only one ferryboat."

"Well, there will be more. You just have to be patient." So he had been paying attention after all.

"I can be patient. I can be _very_ patient," he murmured, fingers beginning their exploration of my forearms once again. It was very hard to concentrate when he was touching me everywhere. The whole beauty of the sunrise was beginning to be completely lost on me.

I rolled my eyes. "Patient? You? You've been hounding me to go out with you since my very first day at work."

Derek chuckled, leaning back against the seat. The sound, deep and rich, filled the cabin. It was a delightful sound. "Yes, and all my hard work paid off, didn't it? Would you rather I had left you alone?"

"Well...no," I admitted reluctantly.

I couldn't see his face, but I was almost positive he was smirking. "You know, I'm glad you don't want me to be the better man," he whispered, now fiddling with a piece of my hair.

"Yeah." I felt quite relieved myself. "So we're really going to do this?" I asked, turning in his arms so that I was facing him. The sheer handsomeness of him took me by surprise again, and, not for the first time, I wondered exactly what I was getting myself into. If I were rational, I would tell Derek to walk away. Better yet, I would walk away, but I wasn't really in the mood to be rational, not when the irrationality seemed so perfect.

"We're really going to do this," Derek agreed firmly. He seemed so sure that everything was going to work out. It was hard not to share in that certainty, especially when I wanted so much for everything to work between us. I needed something now, something to take my mind of work and my mother, and Derek was the perfect thing. The only thing.

"It'll have to be a secret," I said. "The last thing I want is the whole hospital knowing about this." I didn't need any more complications to life right now. Things were hard enough as they were.

Derek grinned. "I can do a secret romance. Sneaking out in the dead of night, discreet encounters in the on-call rooms, secret flirting, car sex. It'll be like high school all over again."

"Hah. I'm glad you find this so amusing."

"Well, you have to admit, your desire to keep this secret if pretty cute." Derek smirked.

I wanted to smack him. He really was impossible. I was trying to have a serious conversation here, and all he could do was mock me. This wasn't funny. Nothing about this was funny. Derek might be sure that this was all going to go without a hitch, but I didn't exactly share his optimism. I wanted to give this a shot because I didn't really have any other choice, but there was a lot for me to lose here. I was the intern, the nobody, and that made this whole thing a lot more serious for me than it did for him, the world-renowned neurosurgeon. "My desire to keep this secret is entirely practical," I replied indignantly. "What we're doing has already gotten us in enough trouble. If we're going to make this work, we need to be careful."

"Hmm," Derek agreed, burrowing his face in the junction between my neck and shoulder. "Very careful."

"Seriously!" I gasped, as his fingers dipped below the waistband of my jeans, which I'd pulled back on to avoid freezing in my sleep. Not that I'd slept that much. "What happened today can't happen again. You can't favour me over everyone else, and you can't berate me for no reason either. You've got to treat me like any other intern."

"You really want me to treat you like any other intern?" Derek asked teasingly, mouth moving along the line of my shoulder.

"Well, at work, yes," I said, trying to maintain some degree of composure. It was so hard to think clearly when his mouth and fingers were roaming all over. "I mean if Bailey—"

The rest of my words were cut off as Derek smothered my lips with his. It wasn't a particularly steamy kiss, but it was enough to make me forget all about what I had been trying to say.

"You need to stop worrying so much," he murmured, forehead pressed against mine. "Whatever happens, happens. We'll deal with it."

"Okay," I whispered.

"Now come on." He grinned, pushing his coat—another garment that had been donned to keep me warm—off my shoulders. "We've still got another few hours until I have to start treating you like an intern again."

* * *

**So this is the end of the officially banked chapters. Chapter four is half-done, and so I should be able to finish it within the week, but the other ones may take longer to write, so the last three updates probably won't be as quick as these have been. **

**Reviews are love! :)**


	4. Holding Us Back

**I apologize for the long wait for an update! This chapter ended up being way longer than I ever intended it to be (I think it's the longest chapter I've ever written!) but I think it will be worth the wait! It's pretty heavy; there's a lot of angst and heartbreak, which I think is a nice change from all the bright and shiny we've been seeing these last three chapters (not that I don't like bright and shiny!). With reference to the timeline, it says it takes place sometime after 2x06, but that basically means anytime between 2x06 and 2x13, which is where they work together on Thanksgiving, and she sort of comes to terms with his choosing Addison.**

**For the OR scenes in this chapter, again, I am not a doctor, so if there are any mistakes, I apologize! Like in chapter 2, though, the medicine isn't really the focus here, so while I did some research, I didn't go out of my way to make sure it was 100% accurate. **

**The next chapter should be up soon-ish, but I won't make any promises. It will be a happier chapter, though!**

**In the meantime, don't hesitate to leave me a review!**

* * *

_Maybe I love you_

_Maybe I just like the sound_

_But if you disappear _

_You'll still hear when my heart hits the ground_

_We'll never know _

_What it's like to be free_

_How can you solve_

_What can't but should be_

_There's no explanation_

_Only what we cannot change_

_So we'll leave how we met_

_With nothing the same_

Holding Us Back – Katie Herzig

* * *

_"And right here, this is a seven-hour craniotomy. You held the clamp the entire time. Never flinched. That's when I knew you were going to be an incredible surgeon."_

_ Listening to him say this, hearing the unwavering seriousness in his voice makes me smile, but I can't help but feel the excitement of the moment fading slightly. It was definitely an interesting surgery, and it was a great experience for both of us as surgeons, but it wasn't one of the greatest surgeries I ever scrubbed in on. In fact, it was probably the most torturous. It was not too long after Addison showed up and Derek decided that he was going to try and stick his marriage out, making him the last person that I would want to spend seven hours stuck in an OR with…_

* * *

**S2, sometime after E6 – Into You Like A Train**

I had experienced many forms of rejection in my life. When you grew up with parents like mine, feeling unwanted or in the way was something that occurred often. You got used to being rejected, you understood that you weren't wanted, and the easiest thing to do was stay out from underfoot. If you were like me—tired of being inconspicuous and making sure to stay out of the way—you rebelled. You went out of your way to be underfoot, you drank, and you partied; you did everything in your power to tarnish your mother's spotless reputation. It led to some pretty spectacular arguments, but it was a good way to vent all of that frustration at being rejected all your life.

Derek's rejection, however, was something different altogether. Maybe it was because I had never dreamed that he would reject me. Sure, Addison was his wife, but after all of the moments we had had together, it never entered my head that he would pick her. So when he did, when he came out with lines like_, We've been married eleven years, _and, _I have to give it a chance_, it was shocking. In the moment, I felt numb, empty, hearing the words Derek was saying, but not making any sense of them. After, when I was alone, everything seemed to catch up to me, and it was terrible. It made me sick, not physically, but emotionally. Thinking about him, remembering all those times we had together, seeing him at work, made me nauseous, and heartsick.

I had never been one of those people who believed that a broken heart could kill you, but now I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure of anything anymore. I was in pieces, and not entirely sure how I was supposed to put myself back together again. As a result, I'd become a zombie. I went through the motions of living: I got up, I went to work, I came home, I ate, I slept, but it was all done out of habit. The days had become a meaningless blur of charts, surgeries, and sleepless nights.

I remembered Derek, though. Every single encounter, whether it was a glimpse of him rounding the corner or an awkward run-in at the nurses' station, was branded into my mind forever, and all the tequila in the world couldn't make them go away.

It had been almost a month since that night, the night that the whole hospital—maybe even the whole city—remembered as the night the train to Vancouver derailed, and that I remembered as the night Derek broke my heart, though broken might not be the most accurate description: he didn't break my heart, he cut it out completely. There was nothing left but a huge, gaping hole in my chest. I was surprised that I was still alive.

"We should have a girl's night."

It was Monday morning, a rainy, dull Monday—typical for Seattle; we'd had four of such mornings last week—and we were all in the locker room—late, as usual, though Bailey seemed to be cutting us more and more slack—getting changed.

Cristina glared at Izzie from across the bench. It was obvious she thought this suggestion was a terrible one. "A girl's night?" she repeated scathingly.

"Yeah," Izzie replied, choosing to ignore Cristina's disapproving tone. "You know order in, watch a movie, have lots to drink...It's exactly the kind of thing we need right now." I couldn't help but notice her pointed glance was directed at me. And suddenly I understood: this girl's night thing wasn't about us getting together and having fun. It was about me. This was Izzie's way of trying to cheer me up. And, right now, getting drunk—people like Cristina and I couldn't have a girl's night without enough tequila to make you forget it all the next morning—sounded like a great idea. "That sounds great, Iz." I tried—and failed—to muster some more enthusiasm into my voice.

Both Cristina and Izzie stared at me. Neither of them had thought that I would go for this. They both had been prepared to persuade and dissuade me.

"How about tonight?" The oblivion couldn't come soon enough for me. I was tired of feeling broken. I was tired of feeling, period.

Again, they both stared at me.

"Uh, sure." Izzie was the first to recover, hastily plastering a smile on her face.

"Yeah," Cristina chimed in, previous disapproval forgotten.

"Can I come?" George asked, struggling into his lab coat. "Since I, you know, live with you and all?"

Alex snorted. "It's a _girl's_ night, Bambi. Why would you want to get drunk with a bunch of chicks?"

"So that he can get laid," Cristina shot back, eyes narrowing. Her hatred of Alex far outweighed her dislike of George.

"As if any of you would sleep with him," Alex retorted.

"Shut up, Alex," Izzie snapped.

"Oh, just come. All of you." I was tired of listening to them bicker and tiptoe around me like I was going to shatter at any minute. I was already broken. That wasn't going to change.

"I'm not going to a girl's night." Alex's expression said he clearly fancied himself above girl's nights.

"It's not a girl's night," I snapped. God, they could all be so childish sometimes. It was just one of many things that made me yearn for Derek even more.

"It's not?" Izzie's brow furrowed in confusion.

"It's not," Cristina clarified. As usual, she was the first one to adapt. "It's like a Bailey's interns thing."

"Oh. Well, okay then," Izzie said. She clearly didn't understand what had just gone on, but she was willing to go with it.

There was an awkward silence, mercifully broken by the arrival of Bailey. "What are you all sitting around for? Rounds! Now!" she barked.

We all slunk out of the room with a chorus of "Sorry Dr Bailey"s.

Thankfully, Derek was absent during rounds. The last thing I needed were his big, sad eyes boring into mine. I didn't need his pity. I'd gotten the message loud and clear. He chose Addison. She was his wife, and he still loved her. Once again, I'd been rejected.

It shouldn't have been surprising. He was a rich, charismatic, highly successful, world-renowned neurosurgeon, who had people flying from all around the world so that he could cut their heads open. I was a virtual nobody. A first-year intern. Bottom of the surgical food chain. The only thing that made me slightly famous was my mother's legacy, but if people found out what she thought of me and my desire to follow in her footsteps, any good impression they had of me would fade pretty quickly. I should have known that it was all about the chase; that it was the fact that I was forbidden fruit and that our relationship was against all the rules that made him want to pursue me. He wanted me because he couldn't have me. And then, when his Isabella Rosellini-esque wife showed up, he went back to her. She was beautiful, rich, and successful, exactly like him. They were a perfect match.

"O'Malley, you're with Burke. Stevens, you're with Dr Montgomery-Shepherd. Yang, you're with me. Grey, pit. Karev, scut." Bailey doled out assignments with a disinterested air; she obviously had better things to be doing with her time. I couldn't help but notice that nobody had been assigned to Derek's service, and wondered briefly if that was done on purpose.

"Seriously?" Alex cried. "That's the third time this week!"

Bailey just raised her eyebrows. "You got a problem, Karev? 'Cause I can see to it that you're doing scut for the rest of your intern year."

Alex shot her a dark look, but headed off without any further argument. Bailey glanced around as if daring anyone else to argue with her, but no one did. We all knew better than to mess with the Nazi. Besides, the only other person who might have complained about their assignment was me—the pit was right up there on the 'assignments interns hate' list, especially seeing as our trauma department was a little lacking—but I was actually grateful. The pit was busy, and even though it wasn't always the most interesting work and most of the cases weren't surgical, it was a place where I would be constantly at work without needing to worry about running into Derek.

"Well, what are you all waiting for? Move!"

George scuttled off, Izzie following close behind, but not before they both shot furtive looks in my direction. I bit back the urge to yell at them. They didn't need to worry about me. I wasn't fine, but that was something I'd gotten used to.

Cristina, mercifully, didn't try to see if I was all right. The look she sent me was one of gloating: _You're in the pit while I'm scrubbing in on cool surgeries_. I didn't want to tell her I was actually fine with working in the pit; it was a sure-fire indication that I was anything but fine—though I was pretty sure she'd already figured out as much.

"Are you sure you want to do this girl's night thing?" she asked, Bailey having drifted out of earshot to gather some patient charts at the nurses' station. "I mean, Izzie will totally go all out with this. It's going to be torture."

I sighed, not wanting to go through this again. I didn't understand how much clearer I had to make it. "It's not a girl's night. We're all just going to hang out at the house and get really drunk."

Cristina frowned, concerned. We'd been doing entirely too much drinking in the last month for her not to be. "Meredith—"

"I don't have all day, Yang! You too, Grey! Get going." Bailey glowered at us, shoving a stack of charts into Cristina's arms. She looked like she was of half a mind to argue with Bailey, but I wasn't. Seeing my chance, I didn't hesitate to flee, Cristina's worried gaze following me all the way down the hall.

* * *

The pit was quiet, a rarity. Most people would be glad to have some time off, but I had been counting on a busy day to keep my mind from wandering. Derek had a nasty habit of invading my thoughts like a particularly violent disease, so I'd been doing everything in my power to fore him out, hence the excessive working, the strange men, and the copious amounts of tequila. When I was at home, it was okay if I was unable to prevent the invasion, but it wasn't something that I could afford to have happening at work. It was bad enough that we worked in the same hospital and that I had the potential of running into the real Derek every time I turned the corner. I didn't need him in my head, too.

By noon—after having dealt with a broken arm, a man with a child with a migraine, and a forehead laceration caused by a rogue tree branch—I was more than ready for an escape. The slow trickle of people coming in the ER doors had stopped for now, and I was pretty sure that the doctors and nurses here were more than capable of dealing with whatever minor casualties might come in over the next half-hour while I headed down to the cafeteria and got a sandwich. Still, I couldn't afford to leave without making sure.

"I'm going to grab something to eat," I said quietly to Tyler, as he approached the desk with a stack of paperwork.

He nodded absently. "Okay. You want to grab me a KitKat while you're at it?"

"Um, sure." While Tyler was one of the few nurses that I had actually gotten to know over the last two months, I didn't really know him well. Nurses and surgical interns weren't normally really chummy. It was no secret that the nurses all sort of hated us. "Don't worry about paying me back," I added hastily, as Tyler searched the pockets of his scrubs for change.

He looked up at me, surprised, and then smiled. "Thanks."

I offered a feeble smile of my own. It had been so long since I'd even tried to smile that I wasn't even sure I remembered how. "No problem."

I'd barely made it three feet from the desk when another one of the nurses called, "Dr Grey!"

Resisting the urge to throttle her, I turned, hoping that my face didn't look as murderous as I felt. "Yes?"

"We've got an MVA coming in. The first ambulance is three minutes out." She looked at me expectantly, obviously thinking I was going to leap into action. Did she think I was a resident or something? I was an intern. I'd barely been working here two months. This was my first rotation in the ER without a resident to supervise me. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I glanced nervously at Tyler, who just shrugged.

"Um, page Dr Bailey. And get a couple of trauma rooms ready. Do we know the ages of the victims?"

The nurse shook her head. _Ok._ So there was no need to be paging pediatrics just yet. "Well, then just page Dr Bailey." I took a deep breath. _You can do this, Grey. Dr Bailey will be here any minute, and then you can take over. _"And page Dr Marshall," she added as a hasty afterthought. He was in charge of the ER today, and had gone down to the cafeteria to get some lunch. He'd be able to take over for her. He'd know what to do.

The phone at the desk rang again, and Tyler pounced on it. He listened for a few minutes, nodded, and then hung up. "That was the paramedics," he said to me. "The first ambulance is two minutes out, and the patient has severe head trauma."

My heart sank. _So much for avoiding Derek today._ "Page Dr Shepherd. And get me a trauma gown."

I couldn't believe this. I had been successful in avoiding Derek for the last few weeks, and on the one day where I had an assignment that I knew would keep me far from the endless blue eyes of one charming neurosurgeon, there had to be a trauma that required his attention. One that I was forced to assist on, too. I was never going to feel relieved when I got assigned to the pit again.

Why couldn't today have been a busy day? Why couldn't there have been a million and one other patients who needed my attention, the way there normally were, so that I would be too busy to get roped into working with Derek? Did fate really hate me that much?

_Fate doesn't hate you, Meredith. It's just the way it is. You work in a hospital. I work in a hospital. We were bound to run into each other sometime._

I clenched my teeth, trying to ignore Derek's voice in the back of my mind. I'd been hearing it all the time ever since that night when he finally told me he was picking her. I'd taken to calling him my Derek, because he was just like the old Derek, the one that had chased after me for weeks until he finally wore me down. He didn't bother me too much at work anymore, coming out mostly when I was at home, and really only staying away when I was in the comforting embrace of tequila.

Normally, I didn't mind. I knew it probably wasn't helping me in my futile quest to get over Derek, but it was nice to have some small piece of him with me still, even if it was a figment of my imagination. Now, however, wasn't a good time. I couldn't have my Derek's voice in my head while I was trying to have formulate coherent sentences in the presence of real Derek, who was going to be worrying about me and asking probing questions about how I was getting on without him.

I wished he wouldn't. He wasn't supposed to be hovering all the time trying to see if I was okay because it made it a hell of a lot harder for me to try and figure out how I was supposed to put myself back together again. I needed a clean break, not one with jagged edges that stabbed at me every day. And Derek, damn him, wasn't letting that happen.

"What have we got?" Derek's voice pierced the confusion of my thoughts. The words were so achingly familiar—how many times I'd heard him say them in the last two months I had no idea—and his voice was one I had been yearning for, but right now, I just wished he would leave. I'd told him that hating him was the most exhausting thing I'd ever done, but the truth was, missing him was worse. Hating him for failing to mention he was married was easy compared to trying to figure out how to live without him, or dealing with the knowledge that he hadn't picked me. I wasn't surprised—given the option between Addison and me, Addison was the obvious choice—but I had thought—okay, maybe more like hoped—that he might have felt something _similar_ to what I was feeling. The knowledge that he didn't—or at least that his duty to his wife was more precedent—was excruciating, and maddening. I wasn't sure if I hated him for breaking my heart, or admired him for his loyalty.

Tyler—thank God—leapt right to the task of giving Derek the required information, allowing me to flee unnoticed out the doors to wait for the ambulance. The air—chilly for early November—hit me in a rush, stinging my cheeks and bringing tears to my eyes, which didn't help the ones I was trying so desperately to fight.

I'd thought I could handle this. Sure, I'd been doing my best to avoid Derek for the last month, and hadn't said anything to him beyond a few perfunctory words, but I'd believed I would be able to handle actual interaction with him. I'd thought that I'd be ready for this, but the sound of his voice made me want to cry. _Who are you kidding, Meredith_, the voice of reason in my brain snapped. _You can't handle him. You're a mess._

Frustrated at myself for my lack of control, I shoved my arms into the sleeves of the trauma gown I'd been given, fingers fumbling with the ties at the back. Several futile attempts at tying a single bow only made things worse; I could feel the tears of frustration threatening to spill down my cheeks as I cursed my trembling fingers.

"Here."

His voice was soft, caring, as his gentle, steady fingers replaced mine, only making me want to cry more. He shouldn't be so nice to me. He shouldn't act like he still cared. In fact, it would be better if he didn't care at all. I'd rather be some fling to try and get over his wife cheating on him with his best friend than something more meaningful. It was easier to get over.

He tied the knot in silence, fingers lingering against the back of my neck before falling to his sides. The rational part of me was screaming at him to stop, but the larger part of me had missed his touch for too long to protest. He was close behind me I could feel his breath on the back of my neck.

Something could very have come of that moment, but neither of us would ever know what because the ambulance cam screaming into the yard. Derek sprang into action, moving swiftly to the meet it as if nothing had happened, but I couldn't move. I couldn't think, or breathe, or feel anything other than the gaping absence Derek had left behind him. It was just too much. I couldn't do this.

The paramedics were getting out and the opening the back, and the gurney was being unloaded, and Derek was saying things, and I couldn't move. The rational part of me—reduced to next to nothing—knew that I should be there, helping, getting the patient into the ER, but I couldn't. It was like I'd been turned to stone. I was stuck in the past, the memory of Derek behind me running through my head in an endless loop.

"Meredith?"

Derek and two paramedics were rushing towards me, pushing the gurney. I could see the concern filling those endless blue eyes, which only made things worse. He couldn't do this to me; he couldn't cast me aside and then worry about me and be kind and expect me to survive. Every time I started to deal with this, to get myself sort-of held together, he swooped in with his gentle concern and fathomless eyes and shattered everything again.

"Dr Grey?"

It was Tyler this time, his concern masked slightly under professionalism. He was worried, but he wasn't going to press it. "Are you all right?"

I nodded, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. "Fine." I'd used the word so much lately it had lost all meaning. "How's the patient?"

He grimaced. Something about his expression set off alarm bells in my head. "Severe head trauma. Looks like he's going to need surgery. Dr Shepherd's already taken him up..."

"And he needs someone to assist," I groaned shoving my hair out of my face.

Tyler nodded, apologetically. "There isn't time to call anyone else. Otherwise I would, believe me."

"It's fine," I mumbled, brushing past him. It wasn't, but there wasn't anything else I could say. I'd just have to hope I could keep it together for another few hours.

* * *

I'd never thought there would be a day that I would dread going into surgery, and certainly not in my intern year. Today, however, all I could think about as that elevator climbed higher was how I wished I were doing anything else. According to Tyler, the head trauma was pretty serious, so we were looking at four or five hours minimum. Add in Derek Shepherd, and you have the perfect recipe for torture. I would almost have been glad if the victim had been a pregnant woman; despite the awkwardness that situation would present, at least Addison would be there to offer a distraction.

By the time I stepped out of the elevator, I had a plan: I had to pretend I didn't care. I had to be professional, if only to protect myself. If I have him nothing to work with—no longing looks, lost expressions, or casual flirting—than he'd be forced to treat me with the same degree of professionalism. So as long as I pretended he was just another doctor and not the guy I'd opened my heart to only to have it smashed, we'd be fine.

_You shouldn't be doing this,_ my Derek said quietly. _You deserve better than this, Meredith._

I closed my eyes briefly, willing him to disappear. He was right: pretending not to care about Derek, pretending that I was fine and not barely hanging on by a thread was going to be the hardest thing I had ever done, and it wasn't going to be made any easier with him lurking in the back of my mind all the time.

Telling myself I was going to be professional and actually doing it in the face of the man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with are two completely different things, however, something that occurred to me as I shouldered open the door t the scrub room. How many times had I told myself I was going to be fine at work, only to see Derek and freeze up? Who was I kidding? I couldn't do this. I couldn't stand here and make small talk—or any talk for that matter—without making it painfully apparent just how much I _wasn't _over Derek. I'd thought that avoiding him completely would make things easier for me, and while it provided temporary relief, it made it so much harder when we actually came face-to-face.

I wanted to run. I wanted to turn and run as fast as my legs would carry me in the opposite direction. I could go now. Quietly, while I still had the chance. Derek wasn't here yet. I could get out, get my things, and leave. I could move to another city—surely there was another program that would take someone with records like mine—and never have to look at Derek Shepherd or his wife again. I'd be able to start fresh, focus on the medicine, and not let myself get distracted by chatty, dreamy attendings. I deserved better than this. I owed it to myself to get out while I still could. The Chief would understand: it wasn't like he didn't know what was going on; the whole damn hospital knew.

Mind made up, I crossed the room to the door. I had to get out of here while I still had the chance. Not pausing for a moment to think about the possible consequences of what I was about to do—like the fact that Derek might not be able to operate without my assistance—I opened the door, and ran smack into Derek.

"Meredith?"

I froze, unable to ignore the knife twisting in my gut. Those deep, blue eyes locked with mine, full of sadness and surprise and concern, and I knew I was screwed. There was no way I could run from that hypnotizing gaze—I'd tried, unsuccessfully several times.

"I, uh..." I knew I was supposed to explain what I was doing here, to tell him that I was the intern assisting on the surgery, but the words escaped me. My mind was reeling, rendering it impossible to try and think straight, let alone string together a sentence. Words, both Derek's and mine, chased themselves around my head in dizzying circles. _Pick me. Choose me. Love me. We've been married eleven years. You're choosing her, aren't you? She's my wife. Pick me. Eleven years is a long time. I can't just throw that away. Choose me. I owe it to our marriage...Love me. Meredith, I'm so sorry. _

"Meredith?" Derek's hands gripped my arms gently. His touch brought back memories of long evenings and lazy mornings in bed, wrapped in each other's embrace, and made my heart ache with longing. He had to stop doing this. He had to stop making me feel this way, making me remember these things, because it was killing me. Literally. "Are you...?"

Suddenly realizing how this looked to anyone who might be passing by, I hastily disentangled myself from Derek's grip and turned away from him, heading towards the sink. "I'm assisting you on the surgery." I was surprised at how cool and detached my voice sounded, given my inner turmoil. Judging by the look on Derek's face, he was equally surprised, whether because of my tone or the news that we would be spending hours in surgery together, I didn't know.

He swallowed. "Oh." His choked tone of voice did not escape my notice, which only made things worse. He wasn't supposed to be suffering. He was supposed to be happy. He didn't choose me. He chose Addison. He was supposed to want Addison. He wasn't supposed to be with her and still want me. That wasn't how it worked. If he'd wanted me, than why had he chosen her? He didn't strike me as the type to be a martyr.

"Tyler told me that the case was pretty serious and there wasn't time to get anyone else," I continued, making it perfectly clear that this wasn't something I had chosen. I didn't want to spend another moment in the OR with him any more than he did.

"Uh, it is," Derek said quietly, coming to the sink beside me to scrub in. "He's got a severe subdural hematoma, and possibly several other bleeders. I didn't have time for a CT, so I'm not exactly sure what's up there. It'll be a long surgery, though," he added, glancing sideways at me as if he expected me to bolt. God knew I wanted to, but there was no backing out now. Besides, running would only give him what he wanted. I was fine. Or at least it was imperative that everyone thought I was. Especially him.

"I know."

I finished scrubbing in as quickly as I could and left the room, eager to get to work so that I would have something to think about other than Derek. These next ours would be so much easier if I could keep my mind focused on the surgery and not the man performing it.

Derek seemed to be thinking along the same lines; when he entered, it was as if I wasn't there. He got gowned and took his position at the patient's head without saying anything, taking a moment to collect himself and assess the patient one last time, probably preparing an entrance strategy. It wasn't until he was ready to begin that he spoke.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

His voice was so quiet that no one but myself could hear. I knew he wasn't asking in a professional context; he and I both knew I was more than capable of toughing this out. He seemed to be wondering whether or not I could do this with him.

"I'm fine," I replied quickly, avoiding his gaze. I wasn't going to sacrifice a learning opportunity to save my heart. _It_ was already shattered beyond repair, and another few hours with Derek wasn't going to make it any better, but it wasn't going to make it any worse, either.

"Well, then. It's a beautiful day to save lives. Let's get started."

* * *

My hand started to cramp up three hours into the surgery. It was the longest surgery I'd scrubbed in on yet, and Derek was nowhere near finished. My sole responsibility was to hold the clamp, allowing him to fix the bleeders and damaged tissues. If the clamp slipped, the bleeding would be more than Derek could control.

I tried to ignore it at first. If I just pretended I couldn't feel anything, maybe it would go away. Muscle cramps didn't last forever. I turned my attention instead to Derek's work, trying to focus on what his hands were doing instead of my own.

I could always switch hands. My left hand wasn't nearly as dominant as my right, but it steady, and I wouldn't be using it for long. I'd just hold it until my right hand uncramped, and then I'd switch back. Nobody would ever have to know.

My conscience was prodding me to say something, though. The responsible thing to do was to let Derek know that I was going to be switching hands, to avoid the worst-case scenario. The surgery junky, on the other hand, argued that any sign of weakness could get me removed from the case. This may have been the most painful, awkward surgery I'd ever assisted on, but it was also one of the most intense, and I didn't really want to throw that away. Though, the rational part of me countered, if I didn't say anything and Derek found out, I'd probably be thrown out of the OR and not let back in for another week.

"Dr Shepherd?" Rational me trumped surgical junky me in this situation.

"Yes, Dr Grey?" His tone was distracted. Clinical. We seemed to have fallen into a routine for the last thee hours: be impersonal and professional towards each other. Had the rumour mill at Seattle Grace not been what it was, nobody probably would have known that anything had happened between us.

"I'm going to have switch hands."

Derek glanced up from his work briefly, the first time he had made eye contact with me since entering the OR. My heart clenched as our eyes locked, and I could see something more than cool professionalism lurking in his eyes. "What?"

"My hand. It's cramping up, so I'm going to switch hands," I said calmly, fixing my gaze firmly on the patient's exposed brain. It was a great way to forget about all my inner turmoil.

"Oh." He seemed surprised by my statement. "That's fine, Dr Grey. Just be careful."

"Of course, Dr Shepherd." I hated calling him that. Before, Dr Shepherd had been a defence mechanism, a way of deflecting inappropriate advances, or it had been used in affection, to tease him. Now, I had to use it anytime I addressed him, because Derek was too familiar a way to address your boss. It just felt wrong. My tongue was itching to call him Derek, to say his name again and again, but I couldn't. Not anymore. He had burned those bridges when he chose his wife.

Carefully, as so not to move the clamp and cause to patient to bleed out, I replaced my right hand with my left, relishing in the ability to stretch out the cramped muscles. The digits in my hand were stiff and sore from being clenched in the same position for so long, and I was now beginning to realize exactly how gruelling surgery could be. It wasn't always going to be easy and exciting.

"You know, I'm impressed," Derek said conversationally, not looking up from his work. "Some more suction here, please, Bokey."

My free hand, which had been clenching and unclenching in an effort to stretch out the cramped muscles, froze. This wasn't professional conversation. We were now entering dangerous territory, territory neither of us should be entering if we didn't want to get hurt. "Impressed?"

Derek nodded. "Most interns would have said nothing, or asked to be excused from the surgery, or even panicked. You just stayed calm, came up with a solution, and let me know ahead of time that you were going to move. That's very impressive."

It was as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. He wasn't going to wade into the murky, painful waters that were our personal lives. The comment was purely professional. "Uh, thank you," I mumbled, deciding not to mention how very close I had been to not saying anything at all.

The rest of the surgery passed smoothly. The craniotomy was extensive—the patient had an excessive amount of bleeding in his brain—but there were no complications, which was a relief. With everything that was going on now, I wasn't sure I could handle any more stress. Derek, thankfully, refrained from attempting to make any more small talk. He explained a few of the finer details of the surgery and pointed out techniques that he was using. I asked a few surgery-related questions, which he answered. Other than that, he worked in silence, and I watched him, hand holding the clamp firmly in place. My Derek stayed silent, allowing me to immerse myself in what was happening in front of me, and forget about the world that existed outside the OR.

Seven hours after we walked in, Derek finished closing and stepped back from the patient with a small, satisfied smile. "Well that's it," he said, unable to keep the satisfaction out of his voice. "He should make a full recovery."

There was a moment of silence as the words set in, and then the OR burst into applause. I couldn't help from clapping politely as well. That was by far the most complicated and impressive surgery that I had ever seen—including all the procedures I had watched my mom do over the years—and, despite how much my life had sucked these last few weeks, I couldn't help feeling that unbelievable high that accompanied a successful surgery.

Derek chuckled at the applause, shaking his head. "Thank you all, but you know, I really can't take all the credit. Dr Grey here did an incredible job. Holding a clamp for seven hours without flinching is no small accomplishment."

Underneath the surgical mask, I could feel my cheeks flushing, as everyone suddenly turned to look at me, still applauding. I couldn't help notice that Derek had joined in, looking pleased. _You should say thank you,_ my Derek chided. _It's not every day that I praise interns in my OR._

_And you should stay the hell out,_ I snapped back. _This is none of your business. Besides, you shouldn't be praising me in front of everyone. It looks bad._

Not able to think of anything to say, I just ducked my head awkwardly, and fled to the scrub room. The sooner I got out of here, the better. José Cuervo was calling my name.

_ I'm allowed to draw attention to the things you're doing right, Meredith,_ my Derek continued, as the doors to the OR hissed shut behind me, cutting me off from everyone else._ You shouldn't sell yourself short. _

_ Yeah, but you can't be doing this to _me, I protested. _Everyone's going to think you're praising me because of what happened between us, not because I did a good job._

_Oh, so this is now my fault? As I recall, you were the one who decided we were going to do this relationship thing. _

_ Yeah, and look how that turned out. _

"Are you all right, Meredith?"

I jumped, heart hammering in my chest. I'd gotten so wrapped up with the Derek in my head that I had forgotten about the real Derek.

"I'm, uh, fine," I replied hastily, turning my attention back to scrubbing my hands and trying to act as if he hadn't just scared the crap out of me.

There was a moment of tense silence as we both washed our hands. Derek was the first one to break the tension. "I'm sorry if I put you on the spot there. You really did do a great job, though."

"It's fine," I repeated, a little more firmly this time. I didn't really want to talk about it anymore.

"You're going to be a great surgeon, Meredith," he said, offering me a smile. It was a shadow of its former glory, but it was the closest thing to a real smile I had seen in weeks.

I wanted to hit Derek. He wasn't supposed to care. He wasn't supposed to be making little comments like this, personal, supportive, caring comments, when he had chosen the other woman. How was I supposed to get over him if he never stopped acting like nothing had changed?

"Meredith?" I could hear the concern in Derek's tone; feel his gaze resting on me, but I kept my eyes fixed firmly on my hands. He should know better than to bring my mother up.

"She wouldn't have been proud of me. She was never proud of me," I said quietly, shutting off the water. I didn't want to do this now. Or ever. This whole "friends" thing that Derek seemed to want was never going to work, because it would be too easy for me to pretend that Addison didn't exist. I wasn't going to be that woman, the one who went and slept with a married man. My mother's indiscretions had been the reason I didn't have a childhood. I wasn't going to do to Addison what my mother had done to my father.

"Meredith, you don't know that," Derek began gently, as if he were calming a frightened animal.

"Don't act like you knew her," I snapped, suddenly frustrated. He just didn't get it, did he? I didn't want him to be nice to me. I didn't want him to try and look out for me or encourage me. I wanted him to leave me alone. I was heartsick and exhausted and I didn't have the energy to be nice to him or pretend to be okay around him. "There wasn't anything I could have do that didn't disappoint her. So don't try and tell me she would be proud of me." And with that, I fled the scrub room.

"Meredith!" He didn't call particularly loudly—neither of us wanted any more gossip spreading around—but it was loud enough for me to know he was going to come after me, which was the last thing I wanted. I couldn't do this anymore. I'd just spent the last seven hours being professional and making surgical small talk with Derek, and I couldn't do it anymore. I had to be alone for a bit while I dealt with the harsh reality that had been once again shoved in my face: Derek wasn't mine, and he wasn't ever going to be.

Thankfully, I didn't have to wait for the elevator. Waiting just gave Derek more time to catch me, and while I could have taken the stairs, getting caught by Derek in there was not an option, especially since the last time he caught me in there, we practically ended up having sex.

Tears blurring my vision, I stumbled into the empty elevator, pressing the button for the third floor. I leaned back against the wall, painfully aware of how often I had witnessed Derek in a similar pose, and tried very hard not to cry as the doors began to close. I had to keep it together until I was home. Then, I could cry my heart out into my pillow, and the whole hospital wouldn't know about it by rounds tomorrow.

"Hey."

My heart sank. Crap. He'd caught me after all.

"Meredith?"

I couldn't look at him. If I looked into those sad, pitying, concerned eyes, it was all over.

"Are you all right?"

_Was I all right?_ Did he really think, after everything that had happened, that I was fine? "No," I said finally, hating how choked my voice sounded. There was no hiding the fact that I was on the verge of tears now.

"What?" He sounded genuinely confused, which made me angry. He was a highly intelligent man, so how could he not understand what something like this would do to someone like me?

"No, Derek, I'm not fine," I snapped, looking up at him. "Happy now? I'm not fine. In fact, I don't think I'll ever be fine. Not when it feels like my heart has been ripped out of my chest and dashed into a million pieces. Is that what you want to hear?"

Derek looked horrified. "No, Meredith, no. That's not at all what I want!"

"Then why the hell do you keep asking me if I'm okay?" I cried. "If you really don't want to know how I'm doing, why do you keep bringing it up?"

The question hung in the air for a few minutes. Derek, for once, seemed unsure of what to say next. "Meredith—" he began, but I wasn't ready to let him finish.

"And you want to know why I'm not fine? Because you won't leave me alone! How am I supposed to get over you when you're always there, saying things, and caring, and being...you!?"

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Meredith...what do you want me to say?" He looked so weary, so lost, that I felt bad for a brief moment. I wasn't the only one suffering.

_ But he's the one who chose,_ the rational part of me pointed out. _He picked her._

_ But I'm miserable with her, Meredith. Can't you see I don't love her? _my Derek protested. _You're the on I want Mer._

_ Then why are you with her?_ rational me argued. _Why aren't you with me?_

_ SHUT UP!_ I cried. All this mental bickering was making my head hurt. I had enough on my plate as it was. I didn't need them fighting, too.

"I want you to leave me alone," I said quietly.

_Do you want me to be the better man?_

_ Yes. No. Crap._

"But—"

"You chose her, Derek. You can't have us both." As much as it pained me to push him away, as much as my heart was screaming at me to take him back, he had to hear this. This was the way it had to be. "That's not fair. It's not fair to me...and it's not fair to her, either," I added quietly.

There was a long, pained silence. I could feel the tears burning in my eyes, and I bit the inside of my lip until I tasted blood to keep them from falling. I was actually doing this. I was telling the love of my life to leave me alone, no matter how much I wanted him to stay.

Finally, Derek spoke. "You're right. It's selfish of me." His tone was quiet and resigned, tinged with bitterness. "I just..." He trailed off, blue eyes imploring me to understand what he couldn't say.

"I know," I whispered. And I did. I got it now. He was being the better guy. He was being true and honourable, and anything else wouldn't make him Derek. "You're being the better guy."

"I don't want to." The admission was quiet, and probably the closest thing I was going to get to him admitting he was trapped in a loveless marriage. Which was fine. It was hard knowing he wanted to be with me, but at least I could pretend he didn't. Saying it out loud would make it irrefutable.

"But you have to," I repeated. "You chose her."

"Meredith," he whispered, closing the distance between us. I shivered involuntarily when his hands brushed my arms. This was what I had been missing, what I had been yearning for for so long.

I knew he was going to kiss me, and even though it was what I had been dreaming of for weeks, I couldn't. It would only make all this so much harder.

"Derek," I said softly, stepping away. "We can't. It's over."

He looked for a moment like he might kiss me anyways, but the elevator doors opened and he pulled away.

"Goodbye, Meredith." He gave me one last long look before I exited the elevator. Coward that I was, I couldn't say it back to him because I didn't want to acknowledge what we both knew.

It was over.


	5. I Can't Make It Without You

**I'm really sorry it took me so long to update! I know I said I would try and have this chapter out sooner for all of you guys, but I got absolutely swamped with work, and didn't have as much time as I wanted to work on this. If it's any consolation, this chapter is the longest one so far (almost 9,000 words!) but you'll have to bear with any spelling/grammar errors—I didn't really edit this before publishing! **

**Big thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, especially the guests, who's reviews I can't reply to via PM! You guys are amazing! Keep them coming! :)**

**This is the chapter with the most dialogue from the show, so I'm going to post this now (it applies to all chapters): I don't own this! All of the dialogue from the show belongs to Shonda and her genius (and also a tiny part to ABC). And the little bit where she finds the plans and the candles was inspired by a scene from L is for the Way You Look At Me, by CileSuns92. (Which is a great story. Check it out if you haven't already.)**

**Anyway, enough of me talking. Happy reading! :)**

* * *

_This is the starting of my greatest fear_

_I'm all packed up and getting out of here_

_But then you call and tell me not to go_

_That I'm the one who put the rock and roll _

_In your life_

_This is the starting of my fall from grace_

_Self-esteem, oh it's seen better days_

_You know, I'd never let this go to waste_

_I'll keep those memories on this map I trace_

_Back to home_

Make It Without You – Andrew Belle

* * *

_Expression becoming more serious, Derek gestures to a scan taped towards the bottom of the wall. "Beth Monroe"—his voice is quiet, more serious, and I can understand why: the clinical trial was hard on both of us, but more so on him—"made our clinical trial a success by surviving." He takes a breath, and I know that all the memories of all of the patients they lost are coming back to haunt him. "You talked me into putting her under." His tone makes me turn and look at him. I can see the love on his face, and the seriousness too; perhaps memories of the last week are resurfacing as well? "That's when I knew I needed you," he says, looking at me with those deep, McDreamy eyes, and I feel my breath catch. I remember that day all too well. I was so desperate that the virus would work, so afraid of losing Derek. It was that night that I really realized he was the love of my life, that I knew I needed him, no matter what. It was then that I knew we could never be friends, not when I would always be yearning for something more._

* * *

**4x16/4x17 – Freedom**

Beth was still unconscious, figure eerily still on the bed. I stood, gripping the railing, and watched as Derek checked her pupils, his fingers caressing her skin as if it were made of glass. I couldn't help yearning for him to touch me like that, and for the thousandth time since we'd finally called it off, I wished I hadn't been so hasty to accuse. I wished I had trusted him when he said he wanted to be with me, and not let my hurt and raging jealousy that he had kissed another woman take control. If I'd had better control over my emotions, maybe this wouldn't be happening.

I could tell from the tense expression on Derek's face that he was still regretting having performed the procedure. He didn't need to be: her vitals were steady, and she was doing much better than many of the patients we had seen. He couldn't think about all the losses now. "She's holding steady," I said, unable to keep the weariness and tiny hint of frustration out of my voice. Why couldn't he have some faith?

Derek glanced at the monitor, frowning slightly. "Her ICP is thirteen." He sighed. "We'll see."

I bit the inside of my lip, resisting the urge to wrap my arms around him and reassure him that everything was going to be fine. "Derek," I said instead, tone soft and gentle, "she's still alive. We've gotten this far. She's still alive." Just saying the words out loud gave me hope. This was going to work. It had to.

"Yes, but for how long?" he murmured coolly.

I sighed. There was just no pleasing him.

"You go." His tone was quiet, resigned. He seemed to be already bracing himself for the prospect of never seeing me again.

"No, I'll stay with her," I said quickly, not wanting to miss a single moment. Whether or not she lived, Beth was our last patient. Not to mention I wasn't going to let Derek slip through my fingers so easily.

"No, I'll do it. You can go." He still wouldn't look at me, no matter how long my eyes remained fixed on him. It only made me more desperate to stay, but at the same time, I knew my staying here wasn't going to change anything. In fact, it would probably just make it worse. Suppressing the urge to say anything else, I left the room.

_Maybe Derek is right, _I thought to myself as I headed down the hall to the locker room. Maybe a little break was what I needed. While I didn't want to leave Beth—not when the fate of my life seemed to be hanging in the balance—I couldn't deny that I was exhausted, mind whirling from the stress of the surgery and all this drama with Derek, and equally worn out from this whole thing with Dr Wyatt. Why she couldn't tell me what it was I was missing about my mother's suicide attempt was beyond me. She kept saying I had all the tools I needed to figure it out myself, but I really had no idea what I was missing. My mother had tried to kill herself. She didn't succeed, because the paramedics were able to come before she bled to death. There really wasn't any more to it.

I tried to clear my head as I drove home, tried to separate myself from everything that was going on at work, but I couldn't stop thinking about Beth, and Derek, and what was going to happen if she didn't live. By the time I got home, I had a killer headache and a mission: get a glass of wine and some Advil—a dangerous combination, but I really needed something alcoholic to soothe my nerves and something to deal with the pounding in my brain—and go to bed.

It wasn't until I got to the kitchen that I realized something was wrong. When your roommates were surgeons, there was nothing strange about coming home to an empty house. In all the hoo-hah with Derek and the trial, it completely slipped my mind that Alex was supposed to be home with Rebecca or Ava or whatever her name was. He'd taken the last few days off to look after her, much to Izzie's disapproval—she was convinced that Rebecca/Ava needed more help than Alex could give her, but hadn't had any luck convincing him. So it wasn't until I saw the blood smeared across the counter and pooling on the floor that I realized something bad had happened here.

It was like someone had dropped a bucket of ice water on my head. I couldn't move, all I could do was stand there, staring. I was a doctor; I dealt with blood every day, and yet the sight of the neat slices of tomatoes on the cutting board, the gleaming, red blade of the knife, and the slick puddle of scarlet dripping from the counter onto the floor made me feel like I was going to be sick. Images of my mother, passed out in a pool of her own blood on our kitchen floor chased themselves around my head, like they were playing some sick game of tag. This wasn't happening. Not today.

It took me a minute to collect myself, and when I did, the headache and the glass of wine were the last thing on my mind. The only thing that mattered now was cleaning up all that blood as quickly as possible. If I could get rid of it all, maybe I could pretend it had never been there in the first place. Maybe I could keep the nightmares at bay.

It took me a good half-hour of scrubbing before it was all gone. I had no idea for sure whose blood it was, but it didn't take a genius to figure it out. The only people who had been here today were Alex and Rebecca/Ava, and last time I checked, Alex wasn't suicidal.

I stood in the kitchen for a moment after everything was cleaned up, trying to pretend I was just walking in for the first time. There wasn't a single trace of the blood left, but I couldn't stay here. The cleanliness of the kitchen wasn't going to fool me; I couldn't get the image of the droplets of blood falling off the counter out of my head.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I exited the kitchen and snatched up my coat and keys from where I had set them down on the hall table. I couldn't stay here, so there was really only one other place I could go.

* * *

Being back at the hospital made it easier to forget about what I had witnessed at home. Despite Derek's insistence that I didn't need to stay, there was plenty of work for me to be doing. I popped in to visit Beth and had a tense, painful conversation with her parents about her recovery and what was going to happen if she didn't wake up. It wasn't really something I wanted to talk about—especially seeing as I was clinging to the hope that she was going to make it—but it wasn't really fair to leave her parent in the dark, either. As soon as it was finished, though, I didn't have any qualms in fleeing the room. Derek would surely be by soon to check on her—since he had no idea I was back—and he was more than qualified to answer any questions they might have.

I had plans to head down to radiology and see if we couldn't schedule an MRI for Beth. I was tired of waiting and monitoring her vitals; I wanted to know what was really going on in there, whether or not the virus was working. Derek probably wouldn't approve, but I wasn't the type to sit around and do nothing. I'd let him slip through my fingers too many time, I'd be damned if I let it happen again.

I'd nearly made when I spotted the Chief coming around the corner. I swallowed, trying my best to appear calm. I hadn't seen him since we'd gone behind his back with Beth's surgery, and I really wasn't in the mood to face him now. Hoping that he wouldn't notice me, I kept walking, acting like I hadn't seen him.

"So you convinced Shepherd to do the second surgery without my approval?"

I stopped in my tracks, unable to control the sudden surge of frustration at his question. Why was everyone trying to pin the blame on me? I was just trying to save Beth's life. What was I supposed to do, send her home to die?

"So?" I replied, completely aware of how insolent my tone sounded. Most first year residents wouldn't dare taking that kind of tone with the Chief, but I wasn't really afraid of Richard. He couldn't fire me, not after everything he had done to me, and even though I didn't normally use that to my advantage, it was sometimes a useful piece of information.

"So?" Clearly, he hadn't expected this kind of answer either. "That's how you speak to the Chief? 'So?'"

He gave me one of his stern, chiefly looks, and suddenly I couldn't take it anymore. He didn't get to do this to me. I wasn't the bad guy here.

"My mother tried to kill herself after you left. Did you know that?"

The Chief stared at me, stunned. Again, this was not the kind of answer he had been expecting.

"Did you know that?" I repeated, more harshly this time. I needed to know.

"I didn't know that," he said quietly, shaking his head in disbelief. "I'm sorry, I didn't know—"

"She was a brilliant surgeon," I interrupted, not at all interested in his apologies. I was angry, really angry with the Chief, for the first time in a long time. It had never really occurred to me how responsible he was for my miserable childhood, but now that I did, I wasn't going to show him any sympathy. "How could you do that to her? She was a talented, gifted, _extraordinary_ surgeon—"

And suddenly, it clicked. Dr Wyatt was right. I'd had all the pieces all along.

"Meredith?" the Chief began, confused, but I was already gone, dashing down the hall.

I burst into Dr Wyatt's office, heart thumping in my chest, to see her seated on her chair, one of her infamous notebooks open on her lap. She looked at me expectantly, and when I said nothing, took charge.

"Tell me," she prompted.

"She was a surgeon," I began, triumphant, yet careful with my words. I was still a little wary of deep, personal disclosures. Dr Wyatt was still a shrink, after all. "She was an excellent surgeon. If she was really trying to kill herself, she wouldn't have slit her wrists." The words were suddenly tumbling out in a rush, me being unable to stop myself from getting more and more caught up in what I had discovered. "She knew better. She would have taken the scalpel and cut her carotid artery. It would have taken seconds to die. She didn't really want to die." Saying the words out loud was like a balm, like some kind of much needed therapy after years of wondering. "She was an excellent, gifted, extraordinary surgeon. She didn't want to die."

Dr Wyatt's face was impassive. "What did she want?"

That was a no-brainer. "She wanted Richard to come back to her."

"And why didn't he come back?" she asked calmly.

I took a moment to consider, but the answer had already been presented to me. "Well, because he didn't know about it, and she was too stubborn to ask."

There was a brief pause before Dr Wyatt continued. "So what does that mean?"

"Well..." I began; suddenly realizing that was an answer that I didn't know. "That part I don't know. Could you tell me, for once?"

She shifted in her chair, closing the notebook and setting it aside. There was a smile on her face for the first time that evening. She looked...almost proud. "I can. It means that you are a gifted, talented surgeon, exactly like your mother, but the difference is you get to learn from her mistakes."

_Learn from her mistakes?_ This was another thing that I didn't get. Ellis Grey didn't make mistakes. What did she do wrong that I could learn from? I chewed on the inside of my lip, thinking about everything that Dr Wyatt and I had just discussed. "Be extraordinary," I said slowly, trying to figure out what the hidden significance in these words was, because there really couldn't be anything else that was important from this conversation. Except, my mother hadn't made any mistakes. Unless..."She wasn't talking about surgery."

Dr Wyatt shook her head slightly. "No. She wasn't."

"She wasn't talking about surgery at all."

* * *

Beth's newest scans had finally come in. I found a quiet exam room to put them up; the ones from two days ago on the left, and the ones from today, on the right. The sight of them was tearing me apart: part of me wanted to look at them to see if there was any change, to see if the thirteenth time was the charm, and part of me didn't want to know. I didn't want to go back to Derek with news of another failure, especially given how painfully clear he'd made it that he didn't want to set foot in that OR, not after what had happened to Jeremy. I could remember our earlier conversation as clearly as if it were happening right now.

_Derek stormed out of Beth's room, clutching her chart in a white-knuckled grip. I understood that he was upset, but he couldn't let that get in the way of his judgement, of his responsibility to Beth. We had promised her a shot at a long, happy life, and if she didn't choose it because of what happened to Jeremy, well, that was her choice, but we weren't supposed to be pushing her to opt against the surgery. If anything, we were supposed to be convincing her that this was the right thing to do, the only shot she had left. Derek, however, didn't seem to see things that way. The way I had to chase him down the hall told me that much. _

_"We'll get it right with Beth," I said gently, finally catching up to him as he rounded the corner towards the nurses' station. This was going to work. I knew it would. _

_"She just lost the love of her life," Derek snapped, barely even glancing at me. "How could you encourage her to do this surgery?"_

_I swallowed the urge to yell at him. Did he not understand how important this was for her? For me? I was the one who had come up with this trial, who had persuaded him to take it on, and now that it was going to be shut down, I had to fight for this surgery. We had to make it work. "How could you encourage her not to?" _

_"You know, it's not me with the big ego, it's you," he said coldly, slamming the chart down on the desk. A few of the nurses turned to stare at us, not used to displays of temper from Dr Shepherd, and his voice lowered to a furious whisper, "You backed me into a corner there. What was I supposed to do, say no?"_

_I couldn't believe he was doing this. This wasn't my fault. I wasn't the bad guy here. He was the one who wasn't doing his job. "Derek—" _

_"I can't." He glared at me, jaw clenched, eyes full of pain and anger. I could see all the losses reflected in his eyes, the twelve patients we hadn't been able to save. "She's just a kid."_

_"She's a kid who will die without this surgery!" Did he not feel the same burning urge that I did to save lives, to give Beth a chance at a future?_

_"She'll die with this surgery!" he retorted furiously. _

_There was a brief moment of silence. I didn't know what to say. This wasn't like Derek. Letting the losses completely squash the conviction, the belief in what he was doing, was not at anything like the overly confident neurosurgeon who'd charmed me into letting him become more than just a one-night stand._

_"That's what you and I do together," he continued, eyes fixed firmly on Beth's chart. "We kill things. Over and over and over again." His tone was quiet and thick with bitterness. Derek wasn't one of those people that yelled when they were really angry, and I almost wished he were. My mother was a yeller, and I'd gotten used to it over the years. These quiet, hate-filled words that stabbed at me like knives were unbearable. I could feel my heart twisting a little more every time. _

_"I killed twelve people. And because of you, I will kill a thirteenth." He shook his head. "Once this is over, we're done. I don't want to work with you, I don't want to see you, I don't want to talk to you; we are done." And with that he walked away, leaving me standing there, feeling raw and heartsick. _

I sighed, taking another look at the scans. This wasn't how things were supposed to go. The trial was supposed to bring us together, not push us further 'd suffered so much already, losing these other patients, and I had pushed him to operate on Beth when he hadn't wanted to. If she died, this was all going to be on me, and Derek would never work with me again. Hell, he'd never want to see me again, and I couldn't deal with that. I had lost Derek once. I wasn't going to do it again.

_Please, please be working. Please live, Beth. Please. _

She'd been doing fine when we checked on her earlier, which gave me hope. With most patients, it became obvious within the first few hours after the surgery whether or not the patient was going to live. So far, none of them had made it more than an hour or two past the surgery. So the fact that Beth was still alive nearly two and a half hours after receiving the virus had to count for something. I'd tried to convince Derek when we went to check on her an hour ago, but he hadn't been so easy to hope.

The door swung open, and I turned, half-hoping to see Derek, and trying to hide the mixture of crushing disappointment and relief when I saw that it was Rose. At least if the virus wasn't working, he wouldn't be here to see it yet. I would have a few more hours with him, a few more hours to savour his presence.

There was a brief moment of awkward silence; neither Rose not I were entirely sure what to say to each other. We tried to pretend to have a professional relationship to salvage whatever little bit of our dignity that hadn't been stolen by the hospital rumour mill, but we didn't really like each other. I didn't think we ever could. To me, she was always going to be the other woman, the woman who stole Derek from me just when everything was starting to work out. To her, I would always be the woman that everyone thought of when they thought of Derek Shepherd, the legacy that she would never be able to outlive.

"Are those Beth's films?" she asked quietly, coming a little closer for a better look.

I nodded distractedly, attention entirely focused on the scans. I didn't have time to waste on Rose, not when the future of my life was at stake. "Yes," I replied, absentmindedly. "These are from two days ago, and these, from today." I indicated with my finger to each scan.

Something about them was different. I felt like I was looking at one of those pairs of pictures they used to show you as a kid, the ones where you had to spot the difference. Something about these two was different, but I wasn't sure what. "Would you hand me those callipers, please?"

I tried to keep myself calm as Rose scrambled to comply with my request. I didn't want to get my hopes up—I'd had them crushed too many times—but I couldn't deny the tiny silver of excitement creeping up in the pit of my stomach. If this was what I thought it was...

Trying to quell my rising excitement, I lifted the callipers and carefully measured Beth's tumour as of two days ago, before comparing the measurement I'd taken against the size of the tumour in today's scans. I flipped back and forth between the two, trying to make sure this wasn't some kind of mistake, that I wasn't simply imagining what I wanted to see. After several measurements yielded the same results, however, there was no denying what I was seeing.

"This one is smaller than that one," I stammered, the childish excitement in my voice making Dark and Twisty Meredith cringe. I couldn't keep the grin off my face. "The tumour's shrinking. The virus is working!"

Rose's eyes widened, and for a moment, she stared at the scans incredulously, before her face broke into a wide smile. "Oh my God," she cried, and suddenly, we were both laughing. It didn't matter that I was the one everyone thought of as Derek's girl, or that she was the girl who was with Derek; in this moment, we were just two people celebrating an amazing breakthrough in the history of medicine.

"You have to go tell Derek." He needed to know right away, to know that this had worked, that we hadn't just been killing people. A tiny part of me was crushed that I wasn't the one who got to tell him, but the larger part of me was too overjoyed that this had worked, that I hadn't lost Derek forever, to care.

"No." Rose's voice was firm. She turned to me, expression suddenly serious. "You have to tell him." She paused for a moment, as if steeling herself for what was to come. "It's the kind of thing he would want to hear from you," she added quietly, before turning and leaving the room.

"Rose," I began hastily, feeling slightly guilty. Sure, this had always been mine and Derek's clinical trial, and by that logic, I should be the one to tell him, but I couldn't help feeling like the success of it was undermining their relationship. Rose was a genuinely nice person, and I had the feeling that she and I might have been able to get along under different circumstances. After all, it wasn't her fault that she was the one Derek had kissed, and that was really the only reason I hated her.

She paused, one hand on the doorknob. I knew I should say something, insist that she be the one to break the news to Derek—despite the fact that I wanted to do it myself—but Rose found words before I did. "Congratulations on your major medical breakthrough," she said, smiling softly. "It's the stuff of legends." And with that, she left the room.

* * *

When I stepped out of that exam room, I was on cloud nine—well, almost. Once I'd told Derek about our success—our "major medical breakthrough" to quote Rose—I'd officially be on cloud nine. I felt like nothing could stop me. Nothing could dampen my spirits. I had just made medical history. My clinical trial—because even though Derek was the attending on this, I was the one who had approached him about it—was a success. We had found a cure for gliobastomas, one of the most aggressive brain tumours ever. This was the kind of stuff people—and by people I was thinking major medical journals—were going to want to write about, the kind of thing that was going to save millions of people's lives.

By the time I got home, though, the glow of success had worn off a little. Derek had proved to be impossible to find—as had the celebratory bottle of champagne he'd put in the tiny fridge in the resident's lounge weeks ago. I hadn't the faintest idea where it ha gone, and neither did Cristina, though I wasn't sure that she'd even known it was there in the first place—the fridge wasn't really something she ever had use for. She hadn't been in a particularly helpful mood when I stumbled across her either, not only because she was busy practicing her sutures, but probably also because of the presence of Extremely Bright and Shiny Meredith, who had never really poked her head out before and disgusted Cristina immensely. I could picture her disdainful expression as if she were right in front of me.

_I burst into the room, after having gotten changed, heart hammering in my ribcage like a jackhammer. Cristina lounged on the sofa, dangling her pager between her fingers, clearly bored._

_ "Hey!" I grinned, unable to stop the enthusiasm from seeping into my voice. I knew she wouldn't be overly impressed, but I had just made history. _

_ "Hey," she replied vaguely, obviously not paying any attention to me and my enthusiasm. "You have got to take this sparkle pager back. Seriously. I am drunk on the power."_

_ "Where is it?" I groaned in desperation, routing unsuccessfully through the fridge for the champagne. It had to be in here. Derek had put it in here, and God knew I had been staring at it for the last few weeks, waiting for the time when we could open it. Now that that time was here, I didn't want to waste a single moment. _

_ "I think it might actually be mystical," Cristina continued, chucking the pager at me. I caught it deftly, mind racing. "Have you seen Derek?" He would know where the bottle had disappeared to. He was, after all, the only one other person who would move it. Everybody had figured out pretty quickly that the bottle of champagne with the Post-It reading, "Don't touch!" was to be left alone. _

_ Cristina reclined on the couch, rolling her eyes. It was obvious she wasn't at all interested in the latest Meredith and Derek drama, and didn't really care that my life was depending on the finding of one Dr McDreamy. "Nope."_

I sighed, wishing—not for the first time—that my best friend had been a little more supportive. Sure, Derek and I had a bit of an up-and-down history, but that didn't mean she had to completely tune out every time I mentioned his name. Most of the time, I didn't care, but this time it actually mattered, and a tiny fraction of her attention would have been nice.

_Where could Derek be?_ It wasn't like him to just disappear. I was the one who pulled the running and vanishing-off-the-face-of-the-Earth acts, not him. He was the one who stayed, no matter how hard thing got—well most of the time, though the ferryboat thing really wasn't his fault. If it had been me in his place, I would have been high-tailing it out of there long before he had. I'd thought he might have been at the trailer, and had headed over there after leaving the hospital—breaking several traffic laws along the way—only to find out that he wasn't there, and getting caught in a very awkward conversation with the Chief...

_"Derek!" I gasped, stumbling onto the porch outside the trailer. I was bursting at the seams to tell him the news; it wasn't really the kind you could keep to yourself, and I wanted him to be the first one to know—apart from Rose, but there wasn't really anything I could do about that one. _

_ "He's not here."_

_ I froze, deflating at the sound of the Chief's voice. Here was an awkward conversation I _really_ didn't want to have. The last time I'd seen the Chief, I'd accused him of being heartless and basically driving my mother to a suicide attempt he'd never actually known about. I'd completely forgotten that he'd been living out here since Adele kicked him out; otherwise I might have been a little bit more careful. _

_ "Oh." The crushing disappointment I felt at Derek's absence wasn't enough o overpower the awkwardness of the situation. Now would have been a perfect time for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. _

_ I wished the Chief would say something, anything to end the long, awkward silence that had fallen between us. I didn't have anything to say—what were you supposed to say to the man you just accused of making your mom so desperate she tried to "kill" herself to get his attention?—and I felt incredibly uncomfortable standing here. He was obviously on his way out to God-only-knew where, and I couldn't help noticing the irony of the situation: I'd spent the whole ride here wishing I could get there faster, only to arrive and wish that I had taken more time. _

_ The Chief sighed, and I fiddled with my coat nervously, wrapping it a little closer around myself. It was chilly outside, and while I hadn't noticed the cold before, I was noticing it now. _

_ Finally, he spoke: "Look, I'm not a bad man. I know I'm the villain in your story, but I'm not a bad man."_

_ I didn't know what to say. He was right, and he and I both knew it. It wasn't his fault that my mother had resorted to such desperate measures, and he hadn't deliberately done anything to her. In fact, he'd just been trying to do the right thing. He'd been being the good guy; my mother just didn't see it that way. _

_ The Chief seemed to be waiting for me to say something. After a moment of silence, he sighed, realizing that I wasn't going to say anything, and walked to his car. _

It hadn't really been until he drove away that I realized the extent of what he had first said. Derek wasn't there. He wasn't waiting for me with his trademark grin and our bottle of champagne. I hadn't the faintest idea where he might be, but I couldn't shake the image of him out somewhere, celebrating our success with Rose. He didn't really want to be with her, did he? He couldn't. We were supposed to be together. Forever. We were Meredith and Derek. We were legendary. We couldn't not be together, could we?

I'd headed back home mostly because I'd given up hope at finding Derek at all, but there had been a small part of me that hoped he would be home waiting for me. As far as he knew, I had left work and gone home, leaving him to watch Beth overnight, and so the logical assumption would be to head over to my house with the champagne to meet me and celebrate together. Opening the door to an empty house just crushed my spirits even more.

The silence in the house was deafening. Normally, I would be more than happy about it; a few moments without Izzie's bright bubbliness or Alex's never-ending parade of women or their constant bickering was a welcome relief. Now however, I wished that they were here to fill the silence and distract me from my thoughts. They seemed to fill the absence of noise with a deafening echo: my doubts about whether Derek actually cared anymore or whether he had given up on us long before; and the memories of my mother drowning in a pool of her own blood that sprang to mind every time I so much as glanced at the kitchen.

_Stop it, Meredith_, the rational voice in the back of my mind snapped. _You're being ridiculous. _

I ran a hand through my hair, trying to find that Bright, Shiny Meredith who had seemed so indestructible an hour ago. I shouldn't have been so upset not to find Derek at the trailer; he was probably just bust finishing up at the hospital. Just because I hadn't been able to find him didn't mean he wasn't still there. Seattle Grace was a pretty big place. There was no need to be freaking out. Everything was going to be fine.

Still, I couldn't help the feeling a sense of urgency. Derek may very well be at the hospital finishing up his work before going to get that champagne bottle and heading out here to celebrate, but I couldn't forget about my mother's mistakes. She had let her pride get in the way of her happiness, and had effectively spoiled her own life, and by consequent, my childhood. I'd been through that with Derek; having already lost him twice, I knew the feeling, and I wasn't prepared to suffer through that again. Admittedly, the first time hadn't been my fault, but with Rose, that had been something I could have prevented. Just like my mother should have told Richard she was miserable without him, I could have swallowed my pride and anger that Derek had kissed another woman—which, I realized after the fact, he had tried to tell me that night when I told him I didn't want him seeing other people. I had to tell him now that I loved him, and that, regardless of whether I was all whole and healed or not, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.

The silence was really starting to get to me. I had to get out of here. Derek might come here when he got off work—assuming that was where he still was—but who knew when that would be—if at all—and I didn't really want to sit around and wait for him to show up. My mother had made the same mistake, and Richard had never known. I wasn't going to take that chance. Derek was going to know I loved him because I was going to tell him. I'd never really had anyone in my life that I wanted this much, nor anyone who wanted me despite all my issues, and I would be damned if I'd let him slip through my fingers.

Mind made up, I took a deep breath and started to think. There was a bottle of champagne in the basement leftover from New Year's last year. While it wasn't _the _bottle of champagne, champagne was champagne as far as I was concerned. I'd go grab it and head back out to the trailer, where I'd wait for Derek. He'd have to show up eventually; it was his house after all.

Deciding to get the champagne was easy. Finding it, however, was an entirely different story. The basement was a disaster, a place where all the crap that we didn't want or need but wouldn't get rid of was shoved. Trying to find a bottle of champagne in there was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I wracked my brains, trying to remember where the champagne was. Most of the New Year's stuff—which Izzie had purchased seeing as none of the rest of us were really that big on celebrating—had been shoved into a box, destined to sit in the basement until it was time to dig it out next year. The champagne had been shoved in there too, Izzie insisting it was better to save it for next year rather than waste it on a non-champagne-worthy occasion.

I shifted a few boxes, cursing her for not letting us keep the bottle in the fridge—though it really would have just been taking up space; none of us normally had an occasion to celebrate that was worthy of champagne. If she hadn't been so insistent that we put it away and save it for next year, I would be on my way to the trailer right now and not down in my basement wading through piles of crap trying to find it.

It shouldn't be so hard to find a box of New Year's decorations. I could have sworn we put them on this shelf, right next to the...

I froze, all thoughts of finding the champagne bottle gone. Sticking out of on of the boxes, where I'd shoved it months ago, were the plans Derek had drawn up for the house. Our house. The house of dreams he was going to build for us on his land. He'd left them here that morning after we'd been discussing them at breakfast, and had never asked about them since. I'd just shoved them in a box in the basement and forgotten about them. I hadn't wanted to think about it back then, hadn't been ready to commit to someone else for a lifetime, or start thinking about marriage and houses and kids. I wasn't sure that I was ready now either, but I didn't want to be without Derek, and if that meant I'd have to take a leap or two, then so be it. I wasn't going to sit around and wait for him to come to me anymore.

I pulled the box out farther so that I could grab the plans and take them upstairs—they wouldn't do us any good down here—when I realized the box was full of candles. The large, white, cylindrical ones Izzie had put up all over the house at Christmas, making the whole place look like it was glowing. She hadn't been able to use all of them—we had hundreds of them; Izzie had bought them to decorate the reception hall for Cristina and Burke's wedding, and since that never happened, they'd just sat boxed up in the basement, waiting for further use. It was ridiculous to keep them all down here—we'd never have use for all of them at once—but Izzie had insisted. _You never know when you'll need them._ And, despite the fact that I had sided with Alex and argued that they were just a waste of space and that we didn't need more useless crap down there, I couldn't help agreeing with her.

_You never know when you'll need them._

* * *

I wasn't the grand gestures hind of girl. I didn't like to go over-the-top or be cheesy, and I certainly wasn't warm and fuzzy. So as I stood in the clearing by Derek's trailer, the clearing where our future home might stand, surrounded by the skeleton of a house—like the kind you'd see on a blueprint, just outlines—made out of hundreds of candles waiting for Derek to arrive, I couldn't help feeling a little ridiculous. My plan, at the time, had been a brilliant one: use all those stupid candles from Cristina's failed wedding that were never going to see the light of day otherwise to build our dream house and show Derek that I was ready for forever, regardless of whether or not I was all whole and healed—the jury was still out on that one. The giddiness of our success had returned as I loaded the boxes in the trunk of the Jeep and drove out to Derek's, this time glad he wasn't there when I arrived; I'd been like a kid on Christmas morning setting the stupid things up and then lighting them all. It was going to be so romantic: Derek would walk in with the bottle of champagne, smiling that delicious, McDreamy smile, and I would be waiting to welcome him home. He'd tell me that he loved me and that he was glad I had encouraged him to do that trial and to operate on Beth, and we'd have hot, passionate sex—though that part might have to happen in the trailer. I wasn't a huge fan of sex on the grass, especially when it was cold and wet out.

After standing in the middle of the stupid, cheesy candle house for half an hour, however, the aura of romance was beginning to fade away. Who was I kidding? This was ridiculous. This wasn't the kind of thing a mature, grown-up surgeon did; this was the kind of thing those stupid, fluffy heroines did in all those dumb romantic comedies that Cristina and I only watched so that we could make fun of the characters and their stupid little lives. She'd be cringing if she could see me now. Not only that, but it was also painfully obvious that Derek wasn't coming. It had been at least two hours since Rose and I had realized the tumour was shrinking, which meant he was bound to have found out by now. It ruined the whole me getting to tell him the good news before anyone else, but I didn't care so much about that. What I really cared about was telling him that I loved him, more than I had ever loved anyone else, and that I was tired of this stupid cat and mouse game we kept playing with each other. I wanted the house and the kids and the lifetime—not right now of course; kids were a little terrifying, but eventually.

I wanted to call him. Wanted to find out where he was, and what the hell was taking him so long. Four times I dialled his number on my cell, only to hang up before the first ring. What if he was out celebrating with Rose? I didn't want to know that I had been stood up for that stupid scrub nurse. Or worse, what if he was at home? What if I had gone to all this effort to make this house of candles—which were starting to go out, one by one—and he had been sitting at my house the whole time, waiting for me?

"Stupid, corny, idiotic..." I muttered, pacing back and forth and glaring at my cell phone like it was the reason for all my problems—which it partially was; if Derek would only call me and tell me where the hell he was, maybe I wouldn't be such a mess "I cannot believe I did this. Stupid, loser, son of a—He could be at home instead of...Ugh. Stupid—"

"Meredith."

The sound of his voice literally made me jump out of my skin. I had been so engrossed in belittling myself and willing my cell phone to ring that I hadn't even noticed the arrival of the very man I had been looking for. Part of me was relived that he was finally here, that he wasn't out with Rose, or waiting at the house, or dead—which, sadly, had been a possibility in some back part of my dark, twisted mind—but the larger part of me was frustrated with the way the entire evening had gone, and the fact that his delayed arrival had completely ruined my plans.

"Where have you been?" I yelled. I wasn't really angry with him; I was frustrated that he was late, relieved that he wasn't abandoning me, and above all embarrassed at the corniness of the candle house, all of which was manifesting itself as anger. It was way easier to take all of this out on him; he was the root of all my problems, after all. "I have been waiting and waiting for you," I continued, and suddenly, all everything was tumbling out in a rush before I could stop it. "And I did this stupid, embarrassing, humiliating, corny thing, and I was just going to tell you that this over here is our kitchen," I pointed with an accusing finger to one of the candle rooms, "and this is our living room, and over there, that's the room where our kids could play. I had this whole thing about I was going to build us a house, but I don't build houses because I'm a surgeon, and now I'm here feeling like a lame-ass loser!" I sighed, trying to reign myself in, realizing that I sounded a little crazy ranting on and on and on about this stupid candle house, and I was probably making even more of a fool of myself. Still, Derek needed to hear these things, needed to understand why it was so bad that he was late, and if he really loved me, well then he wouldn't care about the rambling, would he?

"I got all whole and healed, and you don't show up." I glared at him, as if to indicate that—just in case he hadn't already figured it out—this was all his fault. I had gone and done this stupid, crazy, horribly embarrassing thing, and he couldn't even be bothered to show up. "And now it's all ruined because you took so long to come home," I was surprised to hear the tremor in my voice and to feel the familiar burn of tears in my eyes, "and I couldn't even find that bottle of champagne." Or the one in my basement, for that matter—not that I'd spent any great amount of time looking for it.

Derek said nothing, simply holding up the bottle of champagne—our champagne—I hadn't noticed he was holding like it was the solution to all our problems. I stared at it for a minute, feeling incredibly humiliated—even more so than when I had run into the Chief the first time I came out here. How could I have doubted him? Why did I have to go spouting off all this crap about how he couldn't have the decency to show up when he'd probably been out there with that stupid bottle of champagne, looking for me the whole time?

Derek, to his credit, just smiled to himself, a small, amused sort of smile, and stepped over the wall of candles at his feet. "This is the kitchen?" he asked, gesturing with the bottle.

I just stood there, unable to say anything.

"Living room?" He frowned. "It's a little small." He turned and surveyed my work critically, like it was some award-winning masterpiece and not just a bunch of candles spread out in what I thought was an approximation of a house. "The view is much better from here," he added, gesturing towards one of the rooms facing the cliff.

"And that's the room where the kids are going to play?" He pointed to the room in the far corner, facing the city. "Hm." He nodded contemplatively, tiny smile gracing his lips.

I couldn't believe it. Derek was actually taking this seriously? I hadn't intended this to be an actual plan for our house. I was sure that the one Derek had drawn up was perfect. This had just been some stupid, unbelievably corny attempt to try and show him I cared, not an actual stab at house planning. I wasn't a designer. I was a surgeon.

I was about to point this out to him when he frowned slightly, as if something had just occurred to him. "Where's our bedroom?" he asked, trademark smile curling about his mouth, making those eyes sparkle wickedly.

God, he could be infuriating sometimes. "I'm still mad at you," I said, gesturing accusingly at him with my phone. "And I don't know if I trust you," I continued, trying to ignore the fact that he was walking towards me with that serious, incredibly sexy look on his face. "I want to trust you but I don't know if I do, so I'm just going to try. I'm gonna try and trust you because I believe that we can be extraordinary together rather than ordinary apart, and I wanna be—"

Whatever else I might have been about to say was lost as his mouth descended on mine. It felt so right after so long without it, and I didn't really care about any of the other things I had wanted to say, or even that I was supposed to be mad at him. This was what I wanted. This was what I wanted to be able to do every day for the rest of my life. This was the man I loved more than life itself.

The kiss wasn't on par with some of our steamiest kisses, but that didn't matter. Kissing him—even in the tender, romantic way that I was now—was like a tiny slice of heaven, like a vital breath that I couldn't live without. My hands wound around his neck, pulling him closer, never wanting to let go. And for the longest time, it seemed like I wouldn't have to. Eventually, however, Derek disentangled himself gently. I had to fight the overpowering urge to pull him back and never let him go. He obviously had something on his mind—he had that look on his face, the sad one he wore every time he was about to say something he didn't want to, something that might very well break my heart—and, as much as I didn't want to hear it, I wasn't going to begrudge him his right to speak.

"I have to go," he said quietly, giving me a tiny smile.

"What?" Go? Where could he possibly have to go? He had just gotten here!

"In order to kiss you the way I want to kiss you, in order to do more than kiss you, I need to speak to Rose." He gave me a small smile, the kind that spoke volumes of what was to come. "I want my conscience clear, so that I can do more than kiss you."

I had completely forgotten about Rose. Derek and I were so perfect, so obviously meant to be, that I had completely forgotten that we weren't together right now, that there was another woman in the way of our happiness. Now that I remembered, I hated her more than I ever had, simply because she was spoiling this perfect moment, but I understood why Derek needed to break up with her first. He'd had enough experience with cheating in the past, and I knew he wouldn't want that on his conscience.

"Stay here," he said, before I could say anything. "Don't move." He grinned, the real, full-on McDreamy smile, one that I hadn't seen in months, and it was impossible to be mad at him for leaving.

I sighed, a reluctant smile transforming my own features. "Wait for me," he said, handing me the bottle of champagne. I took it, nodding, unable to find the words to express what I wanted to say: that I would wait for him, wait until the end of the world if that was what it took. I wasn't going anywhere.

I wasn't upset when he walked away. I wasn't worried that he wasn't going to come back, or that he'd cut and run when things got tough. We were in this for the long haul now, both of us. A few hours of waiting weren't going to kill me. Not when it meant we could have forever.


	6. I'm Not Running Anymore

**This update is WAY overdue, and for that, I'm very sorry. School has been much busier than I anticipated it to be, and I've been sick, and swamped. **

**I think I replied to everyone's reviews after the last chapter, but it was so long ago, I don't remember, so I'll say it now: HUGE thank you to everyone who's reviewed! I love all of your feedback. It's very encouraging. :)**

**So this technically the last chapter, but there will be an epilogue, as I am very interested in trying something from Derek's POV. We've been getting a lot of Meredith throughout this whole thing, and it might be interesting to see his take on all of this. Hopefully, that will be up soon, but as I am woefully behind on other updates, I make no promises. **

**Happy reading! :)**

* * *

_But I won't be no runaway_

_'Cause I won't run_

_No I won't be no runaway_

_What makes you think I'm enjoying_

_Being left to the flood_

_We got another thing coming undone_

Runaway – The National

* * *

_He turns away and gestures to the final CT on the wall. "And this is today. Post-op head CT of Izzie Stevens." He looks at me, and the smile spreads across my face. The surgery was a success. Derek did it. Izzie is going to be okay. The thought makes me giddy. But it wasn't easy. Getting to this point might have been one of the hardest things I've ever done._

* * *

**5x19 – Elevator Love Letter**

When my mother died, my world wasn't shattered. I didn't spend days in bed, crying and wondering how I was going to get on without her. In a way, I was relieved she was gone. She hadn't been herself for a long time, and she would have hated everyone seeing her like that, everyone knowing she was sick. Not to mention I was so preoccupied with having basically drowned that by the time I had recovered enough to grieve, there really wasn't any point. We'd never been particularly close, and now that I was freed from her constant negativity, I actually began to like her a little more. She had been a great surgeon, there was no denying that, but she had been a pretty negligible mother, and I preferred to remember and appreciate the surgeon rather than the woman who had raised me.

With Izzie, it was different. It mattered so much more. She was young, talented; she had her whole life ahead of her. She was a friend, someone that I cared about, someone that I was close to. We shared a house. We worked together. George, Izzie, Cristina, and Alex were the closest thing I'd ever had to a real family. The cancer scared me. It scared us all.

The morning of Izzie's surgery, I was up an hour before my alarm. After coming back from Cristina's I'd been unable to sleep, images of the red marks from Owen's hands on Cristina's throat and Derek's face, empty and broken as he stood over Izzie's lifeless body chasing themselves relentlessly around my head. I finally gave up at five, crawling out of bed and venturing downstairs in search of coffee. The house was deserted: Alex had stayed at the hospital with Izzie, Lexie had an overnight shift, and Derek, of course, was still at the trailer. I was glad that he had agreed to do Izzie's surgery, and I got that he needed his own space right now, but I wished he were here. This house had been way too quiet for the last two weeks, and with everything that had happened, I'd needed Derek more than ever. I understood that he needed to get away from the hospital, and that his guilt and tendency to blame himself were eating him from the inside out, but he didn't need to push me away. I hadn't always been there in the past, but I wasn't going anywhere now. I was in this for the long haul. The marriage and the crappy, chatty babies with perfect hair? I wanted all that. I wasn't completely whole and healed—and I didn't know that I ever would be—but I was going to try. And it wasn't like he had always been there, either. He'd done his fair share of running—like now, for instance. I wasn't going to judge him, and I sure as _hell_ didn't blame him for what had happened. I sincerely hoped I never ran into Jen's husband again, because I wasn't sure I could keep myself from hurting him. If he'd never called Derek a murderer, things wouldn't be nearly as bad. Derek probably would have run out to the trailer and spent the last two weeks getting drunk and growing a beard. He wouldn't have shut me out. Everything would be okay. But, of course, because it was my life, nothing could be simple, and so everything had snowballed into the mess we were in now.

I knew Derek was going to be shaky today. His self-confidence had been precarious ever since the clinical, and this had just made it worse. He wasn't going to have a great amount of faith in his surgical abilities, and the fact that it was Izzie wasn't going to make anything easier for him. If she didn't make it...well, I didn't want to think about that.

The coffeepot's bubbling ceased, and I slipped the pot of out the machine, pouring some into Derek's blue Seattle Grace mug. I'd bought it for him when we first started dating, saying that if he was going to spend all of his time here, he may as well have his own mug. It wasn't anything special—I'd picked it up from the hospital gift shop at the end of a long and gruelling shift—but he'd instantly loved it, saying that he'd always wanted one of those mugs. Whether this was actually true or not, I never found out, but it had lived on the shelf in the kitchen cupboard ever since. This wasn't the first time I had used it either: it had been my go-to coffee mug after every single fight or messy break-up that we had. I knew it was silly and sappy and Cristina would kill me if she found out—she already thought I was soft enough as it was—but it made me feel a little bit closer to him, and, given his gaping absence these last few weeks, I took every chance I could get.

Needing to escape the silence of the house and get some fresh perspective, I headed outside, coffee in hand. The old porch swing on the front step hadn't changed at all since my father first built it when my parents were first married, and it sinking down onto the worn cushions was like wrapping myself in a warm, fuzzy blanket. It wasn't nearly as reassuring as Derek's arms around me, but it was the next best thing.

I sighed and closed my eyes, leaning back against the bench and rocking myself gently with my heels. If I focused on the warmth radiating from the coffee cup in my hands and the gentle rocking of the bench, I could almost pretend that none of this had ever happened. That it was just another morning—even though I didn't ever have time to enjoy a coffee on the porch in the mornings. That Izzie didn't have cancer. That Derek hadn't disappeared. Yet every time, the crushing emptiness caused by Derek's absence yanked me back to reality again.

I wasn't religious. I didn't have a problem with other people being religious; if they needed something to believe in, then so be it, but I had been raised in a house founded entirely on science, a place where religion had no room. God didn't save lives. Science did. We didn't go to church on Sundays, or say Grace before dinner, or pray. I didn't like to ask other people for help, and certainly not an all-powerful entity that may or may not exist but now...well these were extenuating circumstances. I was desperate, so if ever there were a time for God—if He even existed—to hear my prayers, now would be it.

_Please God let Izzie live. Let her make it through this. Because Derek can't take it if she doesn't, and I can't lose him again._

The rumbling of an engine pulling into the driveway jolted me back to the moment. I looked up, expecting to see Alex—he'd mentioned something yesterday about coming by this morning to get some more stuff—and was surprised to see Derek's Land Rover instead. My heart leaped, and I wanted nothing more than to run down the steps, fling myself into his arms and never let go, but I couldn't. Today wasn't about me; it was about him. His insecurities—normally so skilfully concealed beneath that arrogant, charming façade—were going to be running rampant, painfully exposed for everyone to see, and he was going to need someone on his side. I had to be strong for him, to reassure him that he could do this, that he had done this a million times before, that Izzie was going to be fine. So I fought my instincts and remained right where I was.

To say that Derek looked awful was a bit of a stretch but he certainly wasn't at his best. The fact that he wasn't drunk or hung-over—thank God—made him look more human, but the beard and the deep shadows ringing his eyes made him look like a completely different person. He seemed older, more tired, as if the trials the world had thrown his way was too much for him. If I could have taken the load off of his shoulders, I would have. I'd have taken the fall for Jen's death and suffered ten-fold what he had in a heartbeat if it meant I never had to see him look like this again. The thought terrified me—these sorts of feelings were completely unfamiliar territory for me—but I was ready to deal with it. The urge to flee was getting easier and easier to squash, which, in my mind, was progress, regardless of whatever comments Derek might have made about me being a lemon. I wasn't the one running anymore. The irony in this bizarre role-reversal we found ourselves in had not escaped my notice, and it made me wonder if this was what it had been like for Derek all those times that I had run away. If so, then I owed him one hell of an apology.

"Hey," I said quietly, as he climbed the porch steps. I couldn't help but notice the hesitation in his steps, and the knowledge that he was dreading this day broke my heart.

He blinked, startled. The fact that he hadn't even noticed me was more than a little concerning. "Hey," he mumbled.

"Do you want some coffee?" I held the blue mug out like a peace offering, my version of an olive branch. "I haven't touched it."

He considered it for a moment, as if weighing the risks of sitting down and attempting a conversation. His eager willingness to sit down and have a conversation was often a bone of contention between us, me often wanting my own space or at the very least some peace and quiet, but now I wished more than anything that he'd just be Derek. I hated this silent, hesitant man who had taken the place of the witty, charming, over-confident man that I had come to love, and I hoped more than anything that this surgery would be a success so that I could have him back. One save was all he needed to be okay, but one more failure would send him to some dark place where even I couldn't follow.

Finally, he made up his mind, sitting down beside me and taking the offered mug with a mumbled, "Thanks".

I watched the way he wrapped his hands around the mug, leaning into the warmth like it was some kind of lifeline, eyes boring into the black depths of the liquid like it held all the answers he was looking for, my heart breaking a little more. There were so many things I wanted to say, and so many more that I wanted to do, but the fear of scaring him away or giving him the wrong message was overpowering. He was surely still feeling guilty about the spectacular blow-up last week, and had probably misinterpreted my detachment from the night before as residual anger with what he had said. I hadn't meant to give off the impression that I hadn't forgiven him for that night—as awful and hurtful as the things he'd said had been, I'd never blamed him—rather I had been so preoccupied with what had happened with Izzie and the fear that Derek would refuse to perform the surgery to think about anything beyond convincing him to operate using any means that I could.

I bit my lip, trying to swallow the questions that were clamouring in my throat. _He needs your support,_ I told myself. _Constantly asking him if he's okay isn't going to make anything better. You have to act like nothing's wrong, like this is just any other day. _

Derek took a slow sip of coffee, staring off into the distance. The lost, empty look in his eyes was really starting to drive me crazy. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking or feeling, which made it impossible for me to know what to say or do. I was already walking on eggshells as it was, I didn't need the situation to be made any more complicated.

"I'm heading in for seven," I said, more to break the agonizing silence than to inform him of my schedule.

There was a long pause. I couldn't tell if Derek was digesting the information I had given him or if he hadn't heard me at all. "Izzie's surgery is scheduled for eleven," he said finally, refusing to tear his eyes away from the depths of the mug.

_So you have to be in pre-op by ten, and you'll have to talk to Izzie about the procedure and run some scans before you do, which means that you'll need to be there by seven._ "I know. We can ride together if you want." Another tentative olive branch. I knew that the last thing Derek would want would be to be alone on a day like today, but his guilt would probably keep him from offering.

Derek frowned. "Don't you have rounds?"

I shook my head, relieved that the conversation seemed to be going somewhere. "Bailey's delayed them. Alex has my car, so I was going to get a ride with him when he comes back, but it's easier if I go with you." It didn't actually make a difference, but Derek didn't need to know that.

"Okay," he said quietly.

The silence stretched on for another few minutes, and the questions were becoming more and more difficult to hold back. Sneaking a peek at Derek's watch, I saw that it was almost six. "I should probably go and get ready," I said, fully aware that I was still in my pyjamas and badly needing a shower.

Derek didn't respond.

"Do you want to come in?"

No answer.

I sighed, chewing on the inside of my lip. I didn't like all of this silence, but asking pressing questions wasn't going to make anything better. I just had to be supportive, let him know where I stood, and give him some space. He was going to be okay.

I rested my hand lightly on his knee, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "You can stay out here if you want. Come in when you're ready," I murmured, resisting the urge to kiss his cheek. I wasn't sure what was too much for him, and I wasn't going to take any chances this morning.

Derek hadn't reappeared by the time I came downstairs again. I tried not to be too worried—he was a grown man after all—but it was all I could do not to dash back out to the porch and coerce him to come inside. Instead, I made my way into the kitchen and busied myself making breakfast. I'd never really been much of a breakfast person, but I needed something to do to keep my hands busy, and besides, now was probably the only time I was going to have anything closely resembling an appetite.

I was stirring milk into a second cup of coffee—painfully aware that the first one had been generously donated to Derek in an effort to make him talk (not that it had worked)—when I heard footsteps approaching the door. I glanced up, wondering if it might be Alex—though I didn't think he'd make it back here, regardless of what he might have said—and was pleasantly surprised to see Derek standing there instead, bag in hand. My hand froze, but I was determined to play it cool. Picking up the mug and plate, I made my way to the table, determined to act like this was just another day.

"There's more coffee," I said, taking a seat at the table.

Derek crossed the room silently and sat down beside me. The empty mug, I noticed, was missing—he'd probably left it out on the porch. I made a mental note to bring it in before we left.

I thought that he might say something to me as he took a seat beside me at the table, but he remained worryingly silent. I was debating saying something—anything—to get rid of the awkward tension, when he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something small, black, square, and achingly familiar.

I couldn't say anything when he opened the ring box and placed it in front of me. I wanted to say yes, but I couldn't. Not now. All he was looking for right now was insurance, insurance that I wasn't going to run, no matter what happened, and I wasn't going to give it to him. He could do this. He may not think he could, but I was certain. And so I would wait until the time was right.

On the other hand, though, I couldn't sit there and say nothing, not with Derek staring at me expectantly, like his world hung in the balance. Sighing, I shook my head gently. "No. Not like this."

Derek nodded reluctantly, almost as if he had been expecting this but wanted to give it a shot anyway. Not wanting him to get the wrong idea, I took the box, gently closing it, and cradled it in my hands.

"Today's your first day back at the hospital," I said softly. "It's about Izzie. You have to operate on her brain. You have a gift, and you can do this."  
I had told myself I wasn't going to say anything, that I was just going to let Derek do his thing, but it had become painfully apparent to me that this wasn't just like any other situation. Yes, he didn't need someone constantly badgering him with a million questions, but he needed someone to believe in him. His own self-confidence was shattered, and if it were anyone other than Izzie, he would still be out at the trailer, drinking beer and wallowing in his own guilt.

Further proof of Derek's lack of confidence: he said nothing, simply shaking his head in resignation, almost as if he disagreed with me. I opened my mouth to keep going, to tell him that I believed in him, and that Izzie obviously believed in him otherwise none of this would be happening, but he stood up quickly, crossing to the doorway and bending to pick up his bag.

"I'm going to shower before I go in," he said quietly, and left.

* * *

Alex, Cristina, and I stopped by Izzie's room halfway through rounds. We'd found out that she was going to be briefed on her surgery, and—having given or been witnesses to the speech a number of times before—didn't want her to be alone. George was nowhere to be seen, which I supposed was understandable. He and Izzie were the closest, after all.

There were several doctors filing in when we arrived, all bearing the signature red scrubs of the Oncology department. None of us had really ever had any dealings with Oncology before, and I couldn't help thinking that the garish cherry colour of their scrubs looked a lot like blood.

Derek was standing with Richard and Bailey by the door, looking uncertain. I wanted to put my arms around him, tell him that he was a god and that he could do this and that everything would be fine, but all that would do was broadcast Derek's insecurities to the world—the last thing that any of us wanted on a day like today. So I hovered with the others in the hall, not sure when it was appropriate for us to go in.

Bailey spotted us almost right away and made her way over, expression surprisingly soft. "Uh, you three. Uh, okay, I understand why you're here. I know you want to help, but I will be the resident on her case. I will be prepping her for surgery, and if you're going into that hospital room today, you will do so as her friends. Izzie needs her people around her, she needs you to tell her everything will be fine, she needs you to hold her hand, she needs _you_. Not more doctors, understood?"

There was a brief moment of silence as the gravity of the situation hit us. That was _Izzie_ in there. Izzie was going to have surgery today to remove a potentially fatal tumour from her brain. She was probably terrified, and Bailey was right: the last thing she needed was more doctors. From the looks of it, there were more than enough of them in there already.

"Okay," Cristina said quietly, steely-faced. I nodded, afraid that I might start rambling if I opened my mouth. Alex said nothing.

"Go on in then," Bailey said, gesturing for us to follow her into the room.

Izzie was propped up in bed, knitting, as if completely oblivious to all the doctors around her. She looked up as we entered, and, though she put on a bright, cheerful smile, I could see the relief in her eyes. She didn't want to do this on her own.

"Okay, good." She set aside her knitting, seeming to relax a little was we took our places by her bedside. "Let's get started."

With a brisk, business-like nod, Bailey began, opening Izzie's chart and describing her condition—not that we weren't aware of what it was. I heard her say things like "metastatic melanoma" and "tumour" and "surgery", but I couldn't focus on anything she was saying. Cristina listened with rapt attention and Alex was staring at Izzie like he couldn't believe this was happening to him—none of us could—but all I could focus one was Derek. He stood at the foot of Izzie's bed with Bailey and the Chief, though slightly behind both of them, almost as if he was trying to hide himself away. From his expression, it was difficult to tell exactly what he was thinking, but I knew by the slightly melancholic look on his face that it wasn't anything good.

"Right. Babies."

Izzie's comment snapped me back to the here and now, and I felt a tiny stab of guilt. I was supposed to be here for Izzie, supporting her, not worrying about Derek. In my defence, she had a lot of people hovering over her bedside, whereas Derek had no one. No one but me.

Bailey flashed Izzie a surprisingly kind smile, and I turned my attention to her, trying to figure out what they were talking about.

"Just leaving the option open," she reminded Izzie soothingly.

"But our priority today is to address the temporal lobe mets in your brain." Derek's voice was quiet, but sure, and my heart sang. He may not have been his usual, smiling, charming self, but this was better than the dark, brooding Derek of late.

"I'm surprised we didn't catch it sooner," he continued, tone turning grave. "This kind of thing can cause headaches and seizures and intense hallucinations,"—I cast a sideways glance at Cristina; we all knew why Izzie waited so long to diagnose herself—"but hopefully, the lesion has clear margins so that I can remove it all."

"Are you people done?"

Everyone turned. The oncologist, wearing the navy blue scrubs that marked her as an attending, steppes forward, glancing up from the chart she'd been studying with idle disinterest. I was a little taken aback by her abruptness, and resisted the urge to snap at her when I noticed that Derek, too, looked shaken. The last thing he needed right now was another blow to his self-confidence.

The oncologist began to talk to Izzie, but it was nothing more than a blur of words describing the harsh realities of cancer treatment. It wasn't something I would want to have to face, and it sure as hell wasn't something Izzie should be facing—not at this age anyway. One glance at Alex told me that he wasn't really listening to any of it either. This had come as a big shock to him, and he was still reeling. Izzie going into surgery, having cancer, the possibility of her dying just when they were finally getting together, it was just too much for him to handle. Not to mention he was terrified and had no idea how to show it. So he clammed up and tried to pretend like this wasn't affecting him when we all knew it was.

"...From now on, every surgeon in this room answers to me. Welcome to the cancer wing, folks." The oncologist finished her speech with a smile and headed out of the room, her residents—all of whom had remained silent the whole time—following.

I glanced at Derek, hoping that I could sneak out and talk to him, but he avoided my gaze, turning instead to Izzie with a small, forced smile. "See you in the OR." And with that, he strode out of the room, Bailey and the Chief on his heels.

The moment they were gone, Izzie picked up her knitting and resumed as if nothing had happened. We all stood there for a moment, staring, unable to believe she could be so calm about this.

After a moment, she looked up at us. "Okay, seriously. Don't just stand there and stare at me, it's making me nervous. Go do something. Save lives."

I nodded, eager to get busy and stop thinking about the upcoming surgery. "Yeah," I said, heading towards the door. "We have rounds."

Cristina glanced once more at Izzie as if to make sure she wasn't going to fall apart. Alex, on the other hand, was out the door without a backwards glance.

* * *

As the hour of Izzie's surgery drew nearer and nearer, the tension in the air became more and more palpable. Alex threw himself into work, Cristina interrogated the oncologist and caught up on some charting, and George was God-only-knew-where. He hadn't shown up for rounds this morning, and no one had seen him since then.

Try as I might to keep myself occupied, I couldn't stop thinking about the surgery. While I was confident that Derek was more than capable of performing the operation, it didn't negate the fact that there was a still a chance that Izzie could die. And that was something that I wasn't ready to face. We may not have always been as close as me and Cristina or her and George, but she was still family—or the closest thing to a real family I'd ever had—and the last thing I wanted was to lose her.

Hoping to avoid the anxious questions about Izzie's surgery and the concerned whispers about Derek's ability to successfully perform it that had been following me around for the last hour, I took refuge in the residents' lounge. All I needed was a minute to myself. I hadn't had a moment of peace since this morning, and the effort it was taking to maintain my unconcerned façade was Herculean. I just needed some time to pull myself together again, so that when I went out there, I wouldn't be a rambling, panicky mess.

Closing my eyes, I rested my head against the side of the cubby and tried to calm myself. _Izzie is going to be fine. Derek can do this. You know that. Everything is going to be fine. _

Feeling a little bit more in control, I opened my eyes, taking a deep breath. I could do this. I wasn't the one with a brain tumour, or the one who had to remove said tumour. There was no reason for me to be hiding out in here.

It was then that I noticed Derek's ferryboat scrub cap poking out of my bag. In all the drama of the last week, I'd completely forgotten that I had it tucked away in there since Derek had left the hospital a couple weeks ago. He was probably already scrubbing in, and I wasn't supposed to go anywhere near Izzie's OR, but I couldn't not give it to him. This was his lucky scrub cap, and of all the days to need luck, today was the day. Balling the cap up in my fist, I headed off to the OR, praying the entire time that I wasn't too late.

Outside the door to the scrub room, I paused. I'd been in here a thousand times, but it was different when it was one of your own on the table. Taking a deep breath, I shouldered open the door, and practically ran straight into the Chief, who was exiting. Over his shoulder, I could see Derek, thoroughly immersed in scrubbing in. Too immersed.

Richard took one look at me and shook his head. "It's not a good time. He's scrubbing in."

"I know," I said quietly, pressing the cap into his hand, "it's just, he should wear this. It's his ferryboat scrub cap. He loves ferryboats."

If Derek heard anything I said, he gave no sign. It was disconcerting to see him so focused on what he was doing, so tense. I had no doubt that he could do this, and neither did the Chief, or Izzie, or Bailey, but he seemed to have no faith in himself. I used to tease him about his overconfidence, about his ego, but now I wished more than ever that he would return. This new Derek was heartbreaking to watch.

I had just rounded the corner when I heard footsteps chasing after me.

"Meredith." Derek's voice sounded from behind me, pleading.

I turned, surprised. He stood a few feet away from me, blue eyes boring into mine.

"What are you doing?" I asked, trying to stay outwardly calm. _He needs you to be strong, _I reminded myself. _He needs to do this._ "You're going to have to rescrub."

Derek shook his head slowly, face full of misery and the tiniest hint of panic—something I had never seen on his face before. "I'm not ready."

I sighed. We couldn't go down this road again. "Yes you are."

"I need to know that at least I have you," he said, drawing a shaky breath. "No matter what happens in there, I need to know. I need you to say yes. I need to know."

_Oh Derek._ Just like this morning, I wanted to say yes, I really did, but I couldn't. Not like this. It wasn't the right thing to do. "I can't say yes. Not if agreeing to be with you forever will make it okay if Izzie dies. I can't say yes."

Derek sighed heavily, looking utterly defeated. I could understand why he was afraid that I might run, but he had to understand that I wasn't going to go anywhere. I meant what I said in the woods. Even if Izzie died, I was still going to love him because I would know that it wasn't his fault.

"I love you," I said, taking a step closer, trying to make him see that I wasn't going to leave, that he had no reason to be afraid. "And you can do this. You _can_ do this. I know you can."

He nodded wearily, as if he didn't believe me, but was resigned to his fate. I gave him a small, encouraging smile, and started to walk away. He had to do this. And to get him to do this, I had to do this, too. I could feel my composure slipping as I started to walk away, Derek's eyes burning holes in my shoulder blades the whole way.

"Meredith," he whispered.

The sound of his voice, so defeated, so hopeless tipped me over the edge. I couldn't just leave him like this. Turning around, I crossed the distance between us in three strides and took his face between my hands. It was the first real physical contact we had had since he'd left, and it made me realize exactly how much I had missed it. Struck by sudden inspiration, I reached up and gently pressed my lips to his.

The kiss was short. Simple. Not like many of the passionate embraces we were known for exchanging. After a moment, I pulled away, looking him firmly in the eye.

"You can do this, Derek. You can. And when you come out, I'll be right here waiting for you, okay?"

He nodded numbly, looking a little more reassured. "I love you," he mumbled.

"I know you do," I said softly. "Which is why you can do this."

This time, when I walked away, he didn't say anything, and I didn't look back. Whatever happened from here on in was out or our control.

I hoped Derek understood that.

* * *

_"See that?" Derek's voice is full of wonder. "There." He points to a spot on the scan. "Tumour-free. Because of you." Derek is looking at me now, and I know that it's coming. All those things that he's been unable to say since Jen died, all the apologies for everything that went wrong, it's all coming out now._

_"You talked me into that OR. If there's a crisis, you don't freeze. You move forward. You get the rest of us to move forward because you've seen worse. You've survived worse, and you know we'll survive too." He pauses, as if something has just occurred to him, and a small smile crosses his face. "You say you're all dark and twisty. It's not a flaw, it's a strength. It makes you who you are." _

_I swallow, trying to squash the lump forming in the back of my throat. The only reason I get people to move forward is because I'm too terrified to stop myself. The harder I push, the more time I spend taking care of things when everyone else is frozen, the less time there is for me to stop and deal with my own feelings. It's cowardly, but I'd rather help everyone get over their own pain than deal with my own. I don't mention this to Derek, however. I have a feeling he already knows. _

_"I'm not going to get down on one knee. I'm not going to ask a question. I love you, Meredith Grey, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you."_

_I take a deep breath, unable to contain the giddy, childlike smile that spreads across my face. This is it. The moment I've been waiting for. "And I want to spend the rest of my life with you." My voice comes out hardly louder than a whisper._

_Derek grins, and I can tell he's just as excited as I am. He's been waiting for this too, even longer than I have. _

This is it,_ the little voice at the back of my mind whispers as Derek leans forward to kiss me. _You're committed now. No more running.

_Unlike in previous years, this thought doesn't scare me at all. I'm tired of running. There's nowhere else I would rather be right now than in this elevator, kissing the man of my dreams, a man I've just promised to spend the rest of my life with._

_Forever. _


	7. Epilogue - If I Didn't Have You

**This is it folks! I wrote this one from Derek's point of view because I figured it would be neat to see what he thought about it all, but there didn't end up being much deep soul-searching like in most of the other chapters. **

**Sorry for the long wait, and I hope you enjoy! Also, don't forget to leave a review! :)**

* * *

_I was alone in the silence_

_'Til I was hearing your voice_

_I don't remember a thing until you_

_Parted the clouds and you gave me a choice_

_I couldn't pick up the pieces _

_'Til I was falling apart_

_I didn't know I was bleeding _

_'Til your love fixed this hole_

_Baby here in my heart_

If I Didn't Have You – Amanda Marshall

* * *

"A little more to the left."

I shift the frame slightly, arms aching from holding it up for so long. "Better?"

Meredith tilts her head to the side, considering. "It'll do."

"It better do. I'm not spending another twenty minutes adjusting it. If you want to do it yourself, though, I won't refuse," I add, winking.

She rolls her eyes. "No way. Not after watching you fiddle with it."

"Hey. I'm not the one who kept insisting it wasn't straight."

"Derek, these are our _wedding_ vows," Meredith replies. "Can you blame me for wanting it to be perfect?"

I sigh, knowing she's right. I want them to be perfect too. "I just don't think it's fair that I have to do all the work. It was _your_ idea, after all."

She blushes. Sappy romance is normally my thing, which was why it was so surprising when Meredith was the one to suggest that we should hang the Post-It with our wedding vows on it above the bed. A constant reminder, she said. I agreed with the idea; I didn't like the idea of our wedding vows being permanently stuck to the back of her locker, which was where they'd been since we'd written them down a week ago.

"I guess I must be rubbing off on you," I continue, stepping down off the bed and slipping my arms around her waist.

She snorts. "Yeah, right."

"You know you love it."

"Yeah, but it's strangely charming when you do it. When I do it, it's just...strange," she says, leaning back against me.

"I think it's cute."

Even though I can't see her face, I know she rolls her eyes. While she may be secretly charmed by my corniness, she's never inclined to believe it's true. It makes me wonder if this is just part of who she is, or a result of years of neglect.

As much as it may have been painful for Meredith—even if she won't admit it—I'm glad Ellis is gone. In the two years since her death, Meredith has finally been able to appreciate herself, no longer afraid of having to face her mother's glaring disapproval.

"So, do you want to do the honours?" I asked, gesturing the Post-It sitting on the dresser.

She twists around in my arms so that she's facing me, impish little grin on her face. "What? You don't want to finish the job?"

"I don't think I could get it straight enough," I reply with mock seriousness.

"Seriously, Derek."

"I'm being serious," I murmur, leaning closer, close enough that our noses are touching. "I'm being...very...serious." I capture her lips with my own as if to prove my point.

Her body responds wonderfully, and, as always, I am delighted to know that I can make her do these things, that I am the only one who makes her feel this way. I hope she knows she's the only one that does these things to me.

My hands begin to roam, tracing the outline of her shoulder blades before curving around to her breasts. She pushes herself closer, trapping my errant hands between our bodies so they can't stop her when she pulls away.

"Seriously, Derek," she says again, though she's slightly out of breath.

I grin, feigning innocence. "What?"

She slaps my shoulder playfully. "We need to get this done. Not make-out like teenagers."

"Teenagers don't normally do what I had in mind," I reply, slipping my hands around her waist. She darts away with lightning quickness.

"You're incorrigible."

I chuckle. "So you've said. Many times, as I recall."

"Yeah, and you'd think you might have learned something by now," she mutters, picking the Post-It up off the dresser. "Are you sure you don't want to do this?"

"Yeah. I'd rather be the one giving the orders this time."

She shakes her head, and I hear her mutter something along the lines of "Ridiculous".

I watch her as she stands in front of the frame, looking at it for a minute before even making a move to hang the Post-It. It's like she's trying to make sure it's going to be perfect before she even starts. The way she approaches it so seriously, like I've asked her to clip an aneurysm by herself or something, bottom lip caught between her teeth, is adorable. When she does finally go to hang it, she moves slowly, as if it's made of glass, and then stands back to admire her handiwork.

"Straight enough for you?" she asks, daring me to contradict her.

"It'll do."

I have to duck to avoid the pillow that narrowly misses my head.

"Ass."

"You're the one that married me," I reply with a grin.

Meredith smiles, stepping down from the bed. "I did, didn't I?"

"You did," I agree, taking her in my arms. "Finally."

She giggles. "It was a long time coming, wasn't it?"

"I'll say," I murmur, leaning in to press my lips gently against hers. "Any longer and I might have gone crazy."

She rolls her eyes. "You would have survived. You made it this far."

Even after almost five years of knowing each other, she doesn't seem to understand how completely and utterly I adore her. It used to bother me at first, but it doesn't as much anymore. After all, I've got forever to make her understand. "I don't think you understand how much I love you."

"Well, then, Dr Shepherd, I think you might have to show me." She flashes a wicked grin, and I return it, marvelling at this strong, beautiful, incredibly sexy woman who is now my wife.

"It would be my pleasure, Mrs Shepherd."

* * *

**So that's it. I want to send a huge thanks to everyone who read/reviewed/favourited/followed this story. I had a blast writing it, and I hope you had as much fun reading it! I also want to say a big thanks to CileSuns91 for beta-ing the first chapter for me and giving me some help along the way when I was stuck on things. **

**I do have another Mer/Der story in the works. It'll be my first stab at a completely A/U story, and it's still in the works, so it won't be published for a while yet. Maybe in the summer? It'll give me time to bank more than two chapters so that the updates might actually be on time. :P**

**Thanks again for reading!**


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